Return my Heart: Lyoko the Second Generation
by lizzpercush
Summary: Four months after the events in Return my Past a new school year dawns at Kaddic High Academy. With XANA's new plan of attack the second generation will be tested to their limits as they come to the realization that the stakes have never been higher.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**1-19-09: My apologies all RMP readers who were waiting for the sequel. You see I finished RMP, decided to take a writing break (never again), and got lost on the path of life…

And for all newbies to the story, yes this is a sequel. The prequel is Return My Past: Lyoko the Second Generation. While I have planned to have a brief recap in the opening chapters of the major events if Return my Past, it would be best if you read RMP first, but hey, who am I to dictate to you what to read.

Without further ado, here is the first chapter of Return My Heart: Lyoko the Second Generation!

**Return My Heart: Lyoko the Second Generation**

**Chapter 1:**

"MAN IN THE HALL!"

Drew and Riley paled visibly at both the shout and sight surrounding them. Who knew that the very same female race notorious for taking infinity and beyond primping could assemble so quickly at a simple shout? They should be called the minute woman. They certainly were armed to the teeth. Were those pitchforks?

The two solitary, foolish, and simple, teenage boys both exchanged uneasy glances while avoiding eye contact with what seemed to be the entire female boarder population at Kaddic High Academy. Somehow, purses had never seemed as lethal as the majority of those bags did now. Drew could only guess how many bricks were stuffed inside those black holes along with nail files, make-up bags, pocket knives, hair dryers, straighteners, and dictionaries, for the more studious.

This had the makings of a XANA attack written all over it. The two guys weren't sure which would be worse: a XANA attack centered on this group of gathered girls while their current Code Lyoko code user was halfway across the Mediterranean, or said group of gathered girls forming of their volition at the mere presence of two guys in the girls' dormitory.

The two upperclassmen had simply been responding to an "urgent" text message from Sakura. 'COME QUICKLY!', it had said. Urgent text messages sent between Riley Stern, Sakura Stern, and Drew Della Robia usually entailed the gravity of an attack from a demonic A.I. program bent on taking over the world a.k.a. XANA. So, like good Lyoko Warriors concerned with the world remaining free, the two guys sprinted over post haste to the girls dorms ready to confer and take action.

Their arrival had not gone well.

One solitary teenage female spotted the two and screamed bloody murder. Now the bloodthirsty females loomed around with death in their eyes and heavy purses. Drew and Riley would never underestimate the female gender again, if they survived this.

"Riley, I'll have you know that it's been a pleasure having you as my friend for the past two years." Drew said seriously. The two teens were standing back to back in the hall. The female mob hovered mere feet away out of striking distance, but with every escape route blocked off.

"Knock it off Drew. They're just girls. We've been through worse. We'll come out of this alive," Riley replied as he subconsciously brushed a stray lock of brown hair out of his stormy grey eyes. "Look at their eyes."

Drew looked, gulped, and reaffirmed his resolve. No pulsing XANA symbols were in those eyes. Great, the entire female boarder population was ganging up on them on their own free will.

"Well, they may just be girls to you, but we are clearly at a disadvantage," Drew retorted, "There are too many of them, and they seem very eager to take a chunk out of our hide." Drew's shaggy blonde hair and hazel eyes had caused many of the same girls surrounding him to swoon once upon a time, but clearly an intrusion into the hallowed girls' dormitory negated any past attraction.

Drew nervously eyed the girls again. They weren't talking. Why were they silent? Why?

"Hey gals, it's ok. The noobs are with me."

A stir passed through the gathered girls indicating a change from the former hostile mood to a new mood of curiosity. The circle of girls parted and through the newly created passageway came…

"Sakura," Riley stated, the relief clear in his voice.

Drew relaxed immediately. It was just Sakura, Riley's younger sister. The danger was over. Or so he thought.

With a scowl on her face and distaste in her gaze, Sakura shot Drew and Riley the _look_. "When I said to come quickly, I didn't mean come inside the girls' dorms, noobs. You know guys aren't allowed in here."

"It's never stopped us before," Drew spouted off cheekily. He regretted it when Sakura clipped his arm with a slug. Drew immediately winced and rubbed his arm. "I see you still have your violent tendencies," he muttered ignoring Sakura's eye roll.

She was the same old Sakura, a feisty black-haired, brown-eyed half Japanese girl with a mean right hook and a short temper. More often then not Drew was her temper's punching back 24:7 through wind, snow, sleet, hail, XANA attacks, , class, love…

As long as Sakura was herself, Drew would be her stress ball whether he wanted to or not. Hazel eyes narrowed. That would change.

Never one to let anything dampen his spirits for long, Drew changed the subject. "So if guys aren't allowed in here, then why are we still here?"

Sakura snorted as she paused in front of her dorm, room 217. "If you haven't noticed, the two of you are being watched like hawks." So that explained the hair raising prickle the two guys were picking up between their shoulder blades. "Besides, we aren't staying. We have places to go and people to see. I just need to pick something up from my room."

Riley and Drew exchanged glances. Did they dare bring up the nagging question of why Sakura had urgently summoned them for what seemed as an increasingly less urgent matter? Of course. They had to beat some type of discipline into Sakura, even if only verbally.

Riley silently cocked his head to the side in a slight motion toward where Sakura stood unlocking her dorm room. Drew raised his eyebrows and gave a slight shake of his head. Riley nodded in return.

"Sakura," Riley began stepping into the domineering role as the eldest Stern child, "If you were lonely, you could have asked—,"

"Aha!" Sakura chirped happily as the doorknob turned, "It works! I swear, this stupid door just simply won't unlock at times. I'll just be a sec." she disappeared inside the room.

Riley's face fell into a dangerously neutral façade. Drew could already sense his next marching orders. Move out regardless of any feminine appeals, apologies, and ploys starting with, and not limited to, tears.

Before either disrespected guys (respectively) could beat a frigid retreat out of the girls' dorm, Sakura had emerged out of her dorm room, a radiant smile on her face, and towing her ambiguous something from her room.

"Now," Sakura said cheekily as she took in the shocked faces of her brother and his amigo, "tell me you don't love me right now. C'mon, try."

Drew reflected briefly during the next seconds of explosive thoughts and emotional shows of exuberance that Sakura, though possessing annoying tendencies and a commandeering assertiveness, was also a good friend deep down and full of wonderful surprises.

Dumbstruck hazel and shocked grey met forest green. The silence was stretched as tight as a snare drum head until cut by a slightly hesitant voice.

"Uh…hi guys."

There right before their eyes was the last member of the current group of Lyoko Warriors. The member who had fallen into the digital sea, had been pulled out, and hidden away by her parents for the past four months.

Released from their trance, Riley and Drew pounced.

"Hallie!"

Sakura just stood by with the biggest grin on her face.

-

After much enthusiastic hugging, being swung around in the air, and the time old back-slap, Hallie was besieged by a torrent of questions.

"When did you get back?"

"You wear glasses? Weird."

"I never really pictured you as a ginger. So you're a bubblegum naturally, eh?"

"Guys!" Hallie cut in raising her hands in a defensive maneuver, "I promise to answer your questions as soon as I finish Sakura's. We never did finish, or even start for the matter, our girl chat. She felt obligated to share the love with you guys."

Cue dumping the conversation back into Sakura's lap. Sakura rolled her eyes good naturedly. Same old Hallie, tenaciously trying to stay out of the spotlight that was continually thrust onto her.

"Who's hungry for pizza?"

-

Students not yet prepared to return to school filled the local pizzeria with bustle, clamor, and business. After much debate the party of four had ordered a large, thick crusted meat lover's pizza. Hallie was carrying the main conversation while Drew, Riley, and Sakura peppered in with questions. Before she steered the conversation back onto her three friends, Hallie answered all questions to the best of her ability.

Her summer had been interesting including a hospital visit and visiting her paternal grandparents. No, she wouldn't be boarding at Kaddic High Academy. Yes, she was going to be a student at KHA. Her family had moved in recently close to the school. Yes, her hair was naturally this hue of pink. No, he-Drew-could not see her roots, and so on and so forth.

Eventually, the topic of conversation moved over onto Riley, Sakura, and Drew's summer. Drew had returned home to the states for the summer, Riley had been hired for a summer job at a deli, and Sakura had been hired repeatedly for numerous babysitting jobs.

The pizza arrived in all its carnivorous glory and conversation halted long enough for the four teens to dig in. Sakura and Hallie hastily staked out their claims on their individual pieces of pizza before the slices could disappear into the all-consuming black holes that Riley and Drew claimed were their stomachs.

Hallie sat back and fondly watched her friends. Riley and Drew were debating over who was entitled to the last piece of pizza. The conversation was centered around how Drew was entitled to the last slice since Riley had eaten the last breadstick, but Drew had eaten more pieces of the pizza then Riley…and while the two argued Sakura eased the lone Helen of meat lover's pizza away. Hallie waited to see when the guys would catch on that the object of their appetite was being consumed even as they still debated ownership rights.

Sakura had finished half of the slice of pizza before the guys got a clue.

Drew stared at the strings of cheese dangling from the last and sadly lost piece of pizza. "Not cool. Definitely, not cool."

Sakura shrugged and continued eating.

Hallie, finding the need to intervene, spoke up, "You know, you can always buy another slice."

Riley and Drew just looked at Hallie in a state of minor disbelief at her utter naïveté before switching to a new topic.

"This place needs is bring back the pizza buffet." Drew stated.

Hallie let out a pfft. "You guys would eat them out of house and home. Wait, bring back the buffet? As in there was one before?"

Sakura nodded. "At the beginning of the summer there was an all you can eat buffet, until the gluttons—a.k.a Riley, Drew, and Dante—decimated the pizza buffet. We were nearly kicked out and permanently banned."

Hallie stared at Riley and Drew with a rapt fascination. She could see it: those three attacking the buffet, cramming their plates, depleting the pizzas, and never quite filling their stomachs. So that explained the evil glares she had felt when they had first entered. "What stopped their exile?"

"Dante," Riley said simply between a sip of Coke, "and Sakura. Apparently, she agreed to baby-sit the owner's kids for half her usual rate, and Dante debugged and modified the restaurants main computer frame."

Hallie whistled. Between the below minimum wage labor and a computer worth of a sci-fi novel, the owner would have been an idiot to turn down the pretty sweet bribe unless he was _really_ angry. "Sounds like a close call."

"Eh, not so much," Drew said, "when is the Emo Prince supposed to return from vacation anyway?"

"School starts in two days, so soon," Riley replied.

"…tomorrow, I thought," Hallie commented. She then froze unexpectedly as if catching herself either before or after making a mistake.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Sakura continued, bouncing off of Hallie's statement yet unaware of Hallie's new mood. Riley was the one who caught on first. "Hal?"

"Uh, yeah Riles?"

"Don't call me Riles," he said flatly (shoot, attempt of distraction equals miserable failure) "I thought you hadn't been in contact with any of us since the spring?"

"I haven't," Hallie replied honestly.

Sakura picked up on her brother's keen observation. "So how do you know when Dante's returning from vacation, much less that he was already on vacation?"

"You shouted it in my ear after I first caught up with you," Hallie, again, replied honestly. The point was true. Sakura at the first sight of Hallie had squeezed the living daylights out of the Belpois while summarizing a summer's worth of memories, events, chronology, and highlights into one sentence. Sakura relented dissatisfiedly satisfied with Hallie's explanation.

"Lucky boy," Sakura muttered as she began eyeing the garlic dipping sauce, "his family won this random sweepstakes for a two week cruise in the Mediterranean. He left two weeks ago to the day. He should be home mid-afternoon tomorrow." Hallie nodded.

Drew flagged down the waitress. "As previously agreed, the pizza's my treat, but you three are my personal slaves for the next week."

"Fat chance," muttered Sakura prompting the launch of a slightly heated but very interesting conversation between herself and Drew.

Hallie internally winced as she felt the inner spotlight of Riley's attention train on her. He was a determined fellow, doggedly so.

"Hey," she smiled, attempting to diffuse whatever questions he was about to send her way. "'sup?"

"When exactly did your family move in?" he asked calmly while discreetly monitoring Sakura and Drew's conversation.

"eh…two weeks ago?" Hallie offered hesitantly.

Riley nodded, a knowing look beginning to emerge in his eyes. "are you still unpacking?"

Hallie, relieved, followed the topic, "Of course. The move has made us really busy. Sorting out school records, claiming mom's inheritance, and all that jazz. My room is a spectacular abomination of cleanliness."

"I suppose Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Aelita are busy moving in, out and about, also."

"More then you know."

"I'm surprised you didn't look us up sooner." Riley said, the skepticism beginning to slightly entering his demeanor.

"Like I said before. No time. So many things to do, so little time."

"Been back on Lyoko?"

Hallie shook her head. "I have not. I haven't set foot on Lyoko since this past April."

Riley nodded but before he could pursue further the inquiries, the waitress came back with the bill and the teens unanimously pooled their money, rose, and left. The four parted paths soon after. Riley, Sakura and Drew headed for the dorms, and Hallie headed for home leaving Riley with an abrupt closure to his prying. The image of the lighthearted pink-haired teen waving a cheerful good-bye squashed, temporarily, any other mild suspicions he entertained.

Maybe he had imagined the emphasis on the word "I" in the last sentence of their conversation. Maybe he hadn't. Regardless of whatever new plots that pink-haired imp possessed, Riley, along with Sakura and Drew, was just happy to see the Hallie they knew restored to them.

-

At the hour of midnight guided Riley navigated the subterranean sewer passages, his only light a flashlight. He would need to be back by 2:30am or else risk being locked out of his room and dorm for the rest of the night.

Riley, as a rule, was never overtly distrusting of any of his fellow Lyoko Warriors, but his trust in Hallie had been shaken four months ago in the spring. He had seen what lengths she would go to in order to protect a secret, including putting herself in harms way.

There was also the coincidence of when the Belpois family had moved in and when Dante left on vacation. The two events were too coincidental to be a coincidence, or so Riley led himself to believe. After the earlier scene in the dormitory, Riley felt he was entitled to check out the supercomputer in order to be absolutely sure that nothing amiss or bizarre was occurring.

* * *

A/N 1-23-09: Yo, 'sup? Well if you're reading this, thank you. Usually as per custom I publish the first two chapters of any new story I publish, but...in four short words major upcoming schedule conflict. For the next three weeks I will be doing all that I can to survive school and band and drivers ed without keeling over in exhaustion, sickness, and/or death. So for the sake of my sanity (and if you think about it all upcoming chapters and their quality of writing) I will be cutting down and prioritizing my time in order to use it efficiently. Which in short means less computer and fanfiction time. (sweatdrop) Well, I warned you.

Also, please send MythBuster a thank you PM. MB is one of the main influences for why this story has been published at this date. If MB hadn't spoken up then I might have done something bizarre (like not publish the first chapter of RMH until the anniversary of the date I first published RMP which was in June...) So send MythBuster lots of love if you have taken the time to read this. Until later, Ta!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** 2-24-09: Hello, I'm back. Drivers Ed is over, and I was....busy this weekend (at a retreat; I got two hours of sleep Saturday night). School has been characteristically hectic, but I am here again and updating as soon as I was able due to login issues. So, for all returning/veteran readers from RMP, Dante is a bit out of character in this chapter, but he hasn't been in character since the whole fiasco with the Lyokoware in Return my Past. Yeah, the first three chapters will be a type of recap/reintroduction of the characters, but by chapter four the XANA attacks/plot should be starting up, so hang on! We will endure this together!

Heh, you guys (the readers) are awesome. Oh yeah, MythBuster, check out my review page. Someone left a thank you for MB (aka Myth Buster) in a review. :)

**Chapter 2:**

For a factory that had not been occupied since April when XANA went into sleep mode, it was remarkably clean, Riley noted. The rusty chains formerly dangling from the ceiling had been replaced, and was that a stairwell? The elevator also bore signs of change. The doors which after four months of disuse should be so rusted to be inaccessible, but the doors opened like a dream with nary a whisper of sound. The inside too had been patched, broken tiles and paneling replaced.

As his ride down to the control room descended, Riley's suspicions grew into a certainty that something would be there to great him when the elevator doors opened into the control room. He was not wrong.

Typing away at the keyboard on a refurbished blue chair in front of the supercomputer sat one Jeremy Belpois complete with glasses, and goatee.

"Riley, good to see you again."

"I wish I could say the same thing," Riley replied as he walked from the elevator to the supercomputer. "What are you doing?"

Shaking his head, Jeremy turned the chair so that he was face to face with Riley.

"I'm stabilizing my daughter."

Riley stumbled back a few steps. "Wha-why?!" _She's here?! She said she hadn't been on Lyoko since April._ "She's off Lyoko alive—,"

"And that's all. All that was accomplished this last spring was locating and retrieving my daughter from Lyoko. If she goes back on Lyoko again and loses all her life points she will die and Lyoko with her. My daughter's life is bound with this computer world."

Normally, Riley was a quiet, thoughtful guy ready to mediate rather then he was to assert any forceful displays of emotion. Normally. There came a point in every life where one is struck like an arrow to the heart, and so impassioned that one rises above their normal tendencies. So it was with Riley.

"You're her father. All you have to do is order her to not go onto Lyoko, and she'll obey."

"She'll resent me for it."

"So? We," here Riley swallowed back the truth, "We don't need her. Dante can already shut down towers, and so can Mrs. Belpois."

"My wife," Jeremy said as he turned back to his program, "has suffered enough from the schemes of XANA. We all have, and Dante, no matter how pure his intentions is linked to XANA. He will never be free of that taint and darkness until XANA has been eradicated from existence.

"Our day, the elders, your elders, the day and era for the original Lyoko Warriors have passed. We can guide, mentor and assist but the burden of waging war on Lyoko against XANA has passed from our shoulders to yours.

Silenced Riley did not speak, and Jeremy continued his work on the supercomputer, monitoring screens, checking and writing code. Jeremy eventually broke the silence between the two first.

"I've already called your parents, and they will let you spend a supervised night at my home after all work is concluded here."

Riley straightened to attention, "Aren't you still unpacking?"

Jeremy nodded. "Yes, but we—my wife and I—have been expecting and planning this night for three and a half months now. It's almost time to leave." At Riley's silently asked question Jeremy elaborated, "He'll be here soon."

For a moment Riley was mystified. "Who?" he finally asked. Then the circumstances, the location, and who the whole scheme was centered around clued him in. Riley let out a resigned sigh while running a hand through his hair, "Dante."

Never mind the fact the black haired teen was supposed to return from his cruise until midday, a good fifteen hours from the present time. Riley had little doubt in his mind that if Dante picked up the slightest hint of unauthorized supercomputer activity he would come running ASAP. Riley even took his mental deductions a step further.

Jeremy had said this event had been in planning for three and a half months. The Belpois's had moved in two weeks ago, the day after the Millard's-Dante's family-left for their sweepstakes cruise. Even if Dante, a modern day machine whisperer, had been able to pick up supercomputer activity in the Mediterranean, he would still be stuck in the middle of the Med practically human and out of control. But if he had picked up on supercomputer activity, which Riley was certain he had, Dante would use all his resources once back on land and among machines to return post haste to the factory.

The echoing sound of footsteps on metal rungs jerked Riley's attention from his mental activity to a mop of pink hair rising from the metal ladder that connected the scanner and control room. Stepping off the ladder was one Aelita Belpois.

As the years had passed Aelita had neither lost her intelligence, love for music, nor her love for the color pink. Now middle-aged and the mother of a teenager, the passing stranger would be hard pressed to find signs of stress and age of such a calling on her face. If anything, she, like her husband, had aged gracefully through the different passages of life. For the lady who had lost her name, father, and at one point in time believed to have lost her daughter while witnessing the rise, fall, and once again rise of XANA, she had emerged physically unmarred.

Having offered a brief warm smile to Riley, Aelita locked eyes with Jeremy, "He's here."

Riley didn't even ask who. Whenever any scheme was centered Hallie, Dante was always inexplicably drawn into it.

…

It was night, and he was early.

He didn't care.

He didn't care that it was night and thus dark. He didn't care what time of the day it was, nor did he care about punctuality. In his opinion he was late, very late.

Maybe even too late.

Even across the sea he couldn't escape the electronic call. It had coiled in his gut, and the sudden intuition had screamed, "Computer on! Computer on! Computer on!"

Of course the supercomputer was on. It wasn't as if Dante could turn it off. To do so would bring a premature conclusion to an unfinished tale with bonds yet left un-severed. If the supercomputer was turned off, XANA would die, and with XANA, Dante-XANA 2.0, the rebellious "son" of the electronic conquistador would die also. So would the Heart of Lyoko, and with the Heart, Hallie would die.

The daughter of Jeremy and Aelita Belpois had caused Dante nothing but trouble and many other things (emotion, loyalty, curiosity, ambition, heartache) since the very days following her birth. Dante scowled at his "father", the foolish, idiotic, unfeeling, ambitious _thing_ that had had an extremely human moment of stupidity when he decided the best way to upgrade Lyoko was to fuse the core of Lyoko with a child. And not just any child, but a baby, a baby Halinor Belpois. Dante scowled at his own past actions sixteen years ago when he had returned the baby Belpois to her parents, and he scowled again at himself for enticing her onto Lyoko three years ago merely because—he hadn't recognized it at the time—he was lonely.

Halinor Estella Belpois, Hallie to her friends, had since the days following her birth had been irrevocably drawn to Lyoko and with her she had brought the two children of Ulrich and Yumi Stern. She was the key to the formation of the Second Generation of Lyoko Warriors, and consequently XANA's destruction.

And Dante could only blame himself.

He had to be curious. He had to help separate the infant from the core of Lyoko and in the separation help create the personified Heart of Lyoko, a part of Hallie that had never really left Lyoko.

He had to drag her onto Lyoko three years ago, kidnapped as she had termed it. Dante had to leave his "father" and repudiate all claims to the kingdom XANA wished to bestow upon him as XANA's heir. And he had to get attached to such an extent that when Hallie "moved" two and a half years ago that he had felt a sense of loss and had recruited Andrew Della Robia to attempt to fill the gap left in the team of Lyoko Warriors.

Oh yes, Dante mused as the bridge to the factory came in sight, he had to repeat the entire process again with Riley and Sakura's youngest sister, Stella. He had to grow attached to her for a reason he couldn't explain. He had to get so attached to the strange Stern girl that in a moment of doubt he would lose his sense of identity succumb to XANA's call and unintentionally eradicate his Code Lyoko code leaving his Code XANA code to delete two sectors of Lyoko.

And then almost immediately after the Code XANA incident while he was left reeling at the sheer massive destruction he had caused, Dante had to take the sucker punch, the cheap blow.

Stella Stern hadn't been Stella Stern. She was Hallie, his Hallie, Hal, and she didn't remember anything about Lyoko or him.

Things had started to go downhill at that point. Without the Code Lyoko code nullifying Code XANA, XANA had been able to start influencing Dante slowly turning him darker and darker. Dante had subconsciously started activating towers, created a polymorphic clone to walk on earth, and had finally been indirectly responsible for Hallie falling into the digital sea.

Apparently, he had used Code XANA one too many times which had inspired Hallie to create Program: Exorcism, a program that in effect made it possible for Dante to be devirtualized from Lyoko against his will by either the complete loss of life points or by a supercomputer user materializing him. Although in order for the program to work, Hallie had transferred over to Dante (through an extremely unconventional action) under everyone's noses (with everyone including XANA and Dante himself) her four codes: Code Lyoko, Code Earth, Code Restore, and Code Heal.

Program Exorcism proved successful but in the process of creating, transferring, and making the program operational, Hallie had rendered herself so vulnerable to XANA that she was tricked onto Lyoko, ambushed by XANA's monsters, caught by—and Dante quoted Drew exactly on this—"some upgraded, twisted, newfangled version of the scyphozoan", drained, and dropped into the digital sea.

In hindsight Dante could see her reasoning for Program Exorcism. She had been trying to help him. But Program Exorcism had inadvertently blessed Hallie when the new model of Scyphozoa came to drain Hallie of her codes. She no longer held her codes at the time, hence the reason why she was dropped her into the digital sea because she had hidden her codes within Dante (in effect restoring his code balance and negating XANA's outstretched influence on him). She was useless to XANA.

But a side effect of Program Exorcism was that Dante, Riley, Sakura, Drew and all their respective parents spent the following two weeks after Hallie's fall into the digital sea thinking she was dead. In fact the entire group, and XANA, would have continued to have believed in her passing if Drew hadn't fallen into the digital sea himself, and been touched by an "angel". In reality, the angel had been the Heart of Lyoko out, about, and alive which consequently gave the group the hope that Hallie was still alive.

In short a recovery mission was staged involving both generations of Lyoko Warriors, and Dante—via the Heart of Lyoko and the four codes Hallie had entrusted with him—found Hallie hiding inside the core of Lyoko. How Hal had been moved to the core and why she had been silent about her survival were still unanswered questions for both the group and Dante. He hadn't actually been able to talk to Hallie about the situation after her return. She had been quickly materialized and whisked away by her relieved yet anxious parents.

Dante hadn't seen her since.

Life had progressed. Dante finished his spring term of his sophomore year of high school alongside Riley and Drew at Kaddic High Academy, and Sakura had finished her freshmen year at KHA also. The group again weathered XANA's attacks without their founding member.

Summer had come and with it XANA's withdrawal. The computer program had retreated, as far as Dante could tell, into the depths of Sector 5 leaving the Lyoko Warriors a relatively quiet summer holiday. And then out of the blue one month and two weeks before school resumed for the fall term, Dante's adopted/former foster parents won a Mediterranean Cruise and took the entire Millard family (all 11 members) on a two week cruise.

And then supercomputer activity started during his absence.

So here he was at 12:28 am trekking for to the factory after convincing his parents to return from vacation a day early.

It was night. It was dark, and he was late.

Dante bypassed the control room. It wasn't like he needed to manually virtualize on Lyoko. All he needed was a thought, but getting off Lyoko would be trickier. Ever since Program Exorcism he hadn't been able to leave Lyoko when he wished, but Code Earth made up for the handicap, somewhat. Stepping out of the elevator, Dante crossed the room and stepped into the closest scanner.

Scanner: Dante

Up in the control room three eyes watched as the supercomputer scanner program hummed into action. Onscreen a row of profiles popped up, one already highlighted, and a second profile slowly began to glow, a sign of the soon activation of the card.

Normally, the particular card about to be virtualized would have been labeled as the name of the person XANA 2.0, but at some point in the second generation of Lyoko Warrior history the card had been modified, so that when the scanner did its thing the card read:

Transfer: Dante

Virtualization

And so begins another chapter in the story of the Second Generation of Lyoko Warriors.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N 2-27-09:**Well here I am again, updating, but this time in an extremely expedient-if not short-manner. Yeah, this chapter should have been tacked onto Chapter 2, but I thought it deserved its own small representation as a chapter. Well, I'm not sure when the next update will be (this chapter was already typed and only needed to be edited), but it will come soon-ish. Yeah, standard OCness applied to Dante again. In essence chapter 3 ends the reintroduction to The Second Generation universe while filling in the readers in a small bit of back story, and sets the scene for when the plot begins (next chapter). So read, enjoy, and (please) review!

**Chapter 3:**

From the moment of virtualization Dante knew something had changed again in the contest of XANA v. the Lyoko Warriors. This time, unlike many previous changes, the change wasn't for the worse. It was more of a neutral change, a shift, a restoration, a coming together to make restitution for old wrongs.

His first clue to this change came with where he was virtualized. He wasn't on any of the planes of Lyoko: not the sunny forest sector, not the vast desert sector, or the restored mountain and ice sectors, nor was he on either of the two different versions of Sector 5. Instead neon blue numbers following electronic stimuli streamed by looping in an endless various repetitions of 1's and 0's. How odd. He had been redirected by the scanners into the computer, and he wasn't alone.

Dante reached out all the while using his talents and connection with the environment around him to fill in his gaps of knowledge on the situation. The Belpois were here and had been here programming, plotting, and concocting for the past two weeks. The elder Belpois at least.

She was there too, barely. Even though she stuck out like a sore thumb among the logical code and numerical values, she was there, a transient being hovering temporarily in this plane of existence. Dante knew with a certainty even before he had made contact with her that this was the first time in a four month time span that Hallie had returned to Lyoko.

And it made sense in an odd way why she was here. Dante recalled perfectly the last thing she had said to him back in April before the world came crashing down.

"_If I gave you something, would you take care of it fore me?"_

She had entrusted him with something to protect and now the time had come to return it.

The transfer of codes this time around was utterly and irrevocably different from the first transfer. For starters both parties were aware of the transfer of the codes, and the codes themselves seemed to hum happily as they picked up their original owner's distinct frequency. As each one tuned in they would drift up and out of their temporary shelter and travel along the data transfer bridge stretching from Dante to Hallie.

Dante, as part of his slightly compulsive/perfectionist tendency, counted and named the codes as they left:

1, Code Restore, the code that had collected and put together the scattered data fragments of the formerly deleted ice and mountain sectors, made fishing Drew out of the digital sea possible, and restored Hallie's Lyoko form two weeks after she had been embraced by the digital void. In essence the code was able to retrieve and put together deleted/scattered computer code _restoring_ the code back to its former state.

2, Code Heal, the code that had banished the infectious Lyokoware from destroying the forest sector. This code did not need a tower to be used, though it could be used in a tower. Code Heal essentially purged XANA from whatever object is infected by XANA.

3, Code earth, the code that brought Hallie home.

And the signature and most well known code of all, Code

And the connection was severed. Alarmed Dante snapped out of his pensive introverted thoughts and focused on his surroundings. There was no sign of XANA's presence, the Belpois' were still monitoring the situation and transfer, so no foul play was involved, but…

Hal was retreating, fading from the scene. Something akin to panic rose in Dante. It was like a scene from his nightmares. He'd lost Hallie once when she moved, twice when she forgot the Lyoko Warriors, and thrice when she fell into the digital sea four months ago and Lyoko had gone deathly silently, but to lose her for a fourth time…

And for a moment…Dante felt a surge of warmth like a bright smile beaming at him and just for him, accompanied with an embrace around the neck with a small voice whispering in his ear _This one you keep_, and then he was in the scanner room disconcerted and disoriented yet faintly aware of the chill of morning and the distant bird calls of the early birds. This was why Dante did not particularly care for Program Exorcism. To be withdrawn from Lyoko at the most pertinent moment…Dante was left wondering as he examined the vacant factory while watching the sunrise if he had imagined it all.

And if he hadn't…they would have to work on Hal's tendency of running away before resolving an issue such as the incident when transferring the codes, both times in fact. Such as the incident four months ago with the kiss, more precisely when Hallie had kissed Dante in order to transfer over her codes to him (Yes, she had in an indirect way asked him if would look after them--_"If I gave you something, would you take care of it fore me?"—_but she could have been a bit more specific about what he was going to take care of and how he was going to receive it).

Even though ulterior motives had been involved, Hal had kissed him, and Hallie, Dante knew, when confronted would apologize and brush off the entire incident—albeit while stammering over every other word and turning a rather peculiarly purple shade of red. And Dante knew where things stood between the two of them despite the…kiss, and Hallie knew where things stood between them also. While Hallie apologized—albeit in a rather endearing way—she would continue her charade of pretending that she didn't like Dante, and Dante in turn would continue to pretend that he didn't care.

They both knew they weren't really fooling anyone, but they also knew what such feelings could lead to if allowed to exist and be recognized between the two. They both knew what a sheer tragedy it would lead to if they cared for each other as more then friends or even as more then a brother or sister would care for the other. Romeo and Juliet didn't have a thing on Dante and Hallie mainly because Romeo and Juliet despite their asinine love wouldn't spur the start of a nuclear holocaust or Armageddon.

And Dante scowled truly for the last time at the regret and the anger he felt when he and she had decided that they couldn't be anything more then friends.

…

"_Why didn't you take all your codes back?" a curious Stern asked. "Won't you need all of them to take on XANA?"_

_A pause._

"_My mom gave me her code. I'll be fine."_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4:**

Not long after Dante's presence left the supercomputer, a dark presence stirred. Briefly, the presence reached out into the data stream surrounding it and accessed all surveillance footage for the past three months. It took merely a few nano seconds for the download to begin and another few to finish. There was no need for it to study all the downloaded data in detail. It had already been absorbed into the presence's memory.

If the presence had a human form and features, it would have smiled then, a dark, twisted smile, and if it had eyes they would have been cold and calculating. So, the Belpois family had returned, and most importantly, one Aelita Belpois was no longer possessed Code Lyoko as a code.

Excellent.

XANA stirred again and began to methodically review the past happenings since the recovery of the key—the lost Belpois—in April. With a certain artificial air of satisfaction the no longer dormant A.I. program reviewed all details one last time before commencing with the next stage.

Excellent, everything was going according to plan. The world didn't stand a chance.

…

It was the day all respectable teens and children of all ages feared, bemoaned, and dreaded. It was the day shunned and not spoken of. It was, regrettably, the first day of school. Such a day signifying the commencement of torture should be heralded in with thunder, lightning, and a raging downpour. Should but nothing quite plays out as it should.

The first day back from summer break was a breathtakingly beautiful day. Clear skies, warm temperatures (read: simmering heat), and a sun cheerfully shining (read: roasting fair skin everywhere) on all angsting teens. Sakura was convinced the sun was mocking them (while burning them).

Seated on a low stone wall near the outer gates of Kaddic High Academy, Sakura kept a sharp eye on the gates as day students straggled in. Beside her, Drew and Riley tussled over a soccer ball, and Dante nonchalantly typed away at his laptop.

"You know," Sakura began "One would think juniors had more dignity and maturity then to fight over a soccer ball."

Riley faked a left headed right, and stole the soccer ball out from under a distracted Drew's nose. Chagrinned, Drew lunged for the ball, and missed as Riley kicked the ball into the air and neatly caught it. Sakura sighed in annoyance at the two's sudden development of hearing loss.

Really, all she wanted to do was converse with someone who would listen, respond, and actually be interested in what she was saying. Sakura looked over at Dante. The typing had ceased, and he was looking at the screen intently, his eyes darting from side to side.

Reading, Sakura concluded and drooped slightly at her lack of conversation partners. Really, when would Hallie get here? She at least enjoyed talking to Sakura. The two had been best friends since practically birth.

Bored, Sakura turned her attention to the conversations surrounding her. It wasn't like she had anything else to do (read: homework).

"…it's the creepiest thing."

"I know! What's her problem?"

"..can you believe the number of new students? They're so many of them."

"There's only a handful that I know of, and technically one is an old student returning to school after a few years away."

"….dude, did you see Sarah? She shot up a foot over break!"

"….the computer science team is going to rock this year! Finals, all the way!"

"…you looking forward to Calculus?"

"No, it's going to be a stomp or be stomped year."

"What?"

"Either the tests kill us and our grades, or we kill the tests."

"Ah."

"…My parents are _so_ lame. I'm, like, grounded because _they_ were irresponsible."

"What happened?"

"I was backing the car out, and they left the lawnmower in the drive way. How was I supposed to know it was there?"

"Wouldn't you have seen it?"

"At two in the morning? Please. Anyway, I'm grounded because they can't put there stuff away, and they are so uptight!"

"I thought you weren't allowed outside past curfew."

"Psh…curfew, smurfew. There was this totally wicked party that I simply could not miss, curfew or not. But the point is my parents are so lame. _I_ didn't do anything wrong!"

_Sure you didn't, _Sakura thought tuning out that one-sided drama. A couple passed her perch and caught her eye. Sakura felt her level of self pity up another notch at the sight of the entwined hands, bright smiles, and goo-goo eyes.

_I wish_, she mused wistfully. Before her self pity could plummet to a new extreme another conversation caught her ear.

"It's so weird."

"Yes, you reading, actually reading_,_ something _is_ weird."  
"I don't get it though."

"Elle, it's a newspaper. It has the news in it, even the funnies. There isn't a lot to not get."

"Oh yeah Mr. Wise Guy? _You_ read it."

(Exasperated sigh) "Fine, I will, give me the newspaper…Elle, I said to give me the newspaper, not a poster."

"This is the newspaper! I got it off the news stand myself!"

"Ok. What is that thing?"

"You're asking me? I was asking you."

Jumping down from her perch on the stone wall, Sakura padded over to the arguing guy and gal—not a couple, maybe close friends/rivals. Carefully slipping behind them unnoticed, Sakura peered over the girl's shoulder to look at the front page of the newspaper.

_Oh,_ was all her mind could produce after she caught sight of the front page. The rest of her had descended into a state of paralysis.

Somehow Sakura found herself sitting on the stone wall with a newspaper clutched in her hand at the center of attention. Well, the center of most of the attention. Dante was still enraptured with his laptop. Aside from him four concerned gazes peered down.

"What happened to her?" asked Drew.

A blur of memories from the past few minutes rushed back to Sakura. The guy and the girl had tossed the newspaper. She had grabbed it, and had gone back to the wall just as Hallie walked up…

While Sakura was known for her wide range of emotions and the ability to cycle through them almost instantly, it was still a strange sight to see Sakura speechless. Sakura always had something to say, and normally, the only thing that caused the outcome of her losing the ability to form a coherent sentence was a fight, a threat to someone she cared for, or a crush.

Hallie tugged the newspaper from Sakura's clenched fingers and unfolded the tightly smashed ball of print. Sakura distantly registered the flash of surprise in Hallie's widening eyes and the softly mouthed, 'Oh'. Grimly, she showed Riley and Dante the source of all the trouble, the swiped front page of the local newspaper.

"Oh," was Drew's only response. He and Riley grew quite grim and austere at the sight of the front page.

Hallie had a tired yet resigned smile on her face. "I think we can safely say he's back." She said and glanced over at Dante. "Any other welcome messages from online?"

Dante shook his head and turned the laptop's screen for all four to see. "Apparently, a malicious hacker initiated a widespread virus infestation into local newspapers which took over the printing presses. The newspapers are crying foul play."

Silence fell over the group. It was actually amusing how close the newspapers were to the truth. After all, a XANA possessed human by itself wasn't enough to cause for the front page of every newspaper in the city to have nothing printed on it but the enlarged symbol of XANA. But a virus infection that targeted specific computers… That would do it.

"The conspiracy theorists are having a field day, and the UFO lovers are crying aliens," Dante continued as he clicked from web page to web page. "The virus itself has disintegrated digitally, and no towers are currently active," he concluded.

The group sat in silence alternately looking at and away from the XANA symbol emblazoned on the front page of the newspaper. Finally Riley spoke.

"It's a warning," he said. "A reminder that XANA's still here and that this isn't over."

"An en guarde," Drew added, "a call to fight."

The five teens exchanged looks. They never would escape XANA, would they?

"Well, if it's a fight he wants," Riley began, "it's not like we're green noobs anymore. We've tangled with XANA before."

Following her sibling's train of thought, Sakura spoke, "If it's a fight he wants, then he'll get a fight. As intimidating as XANA is, I know none of us here are scared of him."

"But he isn't here to fight." All eyes turned to Dante. "He's here to win. XANA wants something, and he's had enough of playtime. This isn't the sign of another round of play with the Lyoko warriors. All those attacks before were tests to figure out all our strengths and weaknesses. XANA knows what he wants, and how he's going to get it, and anyone who stands in his path will be obliterated."

"Then we won't let him get what he wants," Riley denied coolly. "He won't win. He hasn't yet, and we won't let him."

Quickly turning crimson eyes met Riley's cool grey ones. "You're underestimating XANA," Dante replied.

"You're underestimating _us_." Riley almost snarled.

"You don't know XANA. You've seen only a small fraction of what he's capable of."

"You make it sound like we don't stand a chance."

The 'We don't' practically hung in the air, but Dante didn't say it. Not because it would render the situation hopeless, or because it was a lie, but because of a small restraining gesture. A soft touch from Hallie's hand to Dante's arm stopped the heated words from coming.

Green eyes sheltered behind black glasses frames glanced between the two opposing forces. She spoke.

"We definitely won't stand a chance if we keep up this bickering. The more we distance and divide ourselves, the easier it is for us to fall and for us to hurt others."

Hallie drew in a breath. "Look, you both have solid points. XANA is not to be taken lightly," here Hallie turned her green eyes imploringly to Dante's abating crimson. "And neither are we. Look, Riley, Sakura, and Drew are formidable Lyoko Warriors. They're resourceful and know how to use their special abilities to their advantage. And _we_, you and I, have home ground advantage on Lyoko."

Removing her hand and addressing the group, she continued, "Look, I know I've been AWOL, MIA, and a burden more often then not, but this fight isn't impossible."

Drew grinned. "XANA keeps making the same mistake over and over. He keeps underestimating us and what we can do."

"Besides, we've weathered worse in the past," Sakura chimed in.

Thoughts of kidnappings, hunts to the death with the Lyoko Warriors as the targets, and other XANA attacks were cut off by Dante's final premonition.

"The worst has yet to come."

…

The warning bell for the first class of the day broke the group meeting up soon thereafter. The first day of school and tidings of doom noticeably weighed down on the group—although, some would say the first day of school and tidings of doom went together hand in hand.

Out of the whole group Sakura was the most to be pitied. Her first hour class was a computer class aka learning to write code and all that jazz. Dante personally oversaw the immediate backing up of the entire school computer networks' memories. Sakura and computers did not mix, period. The sympathies of the Lyoko Warriors were extended to Sakura, her teacher, the computers, and to her classmates and future project partners. Since he had study hall first hour, Riley walked her to the computer lab, Drew and Hallie wished her the best before she walked to her "doom, and Dante watched it with half a ghost of a smile on his face.

Deep within his mind a tenuous connection existed between Dante and XANA. As far back as he could remember the connection had always been there. Over the years the connection between the two had grown and thinned in accordance to Dante's stance and choices concerning XANA. Presently it was merely a thread, a small but deceptively resilient connection.

It was because of this slight connection that Dante knew XANA was up to no good. It was how he would know a tower had been activated, and where XANA's monsters hid on Lyoko. And it was through this fiber connection that Dante knew and could feel the growing ominous and overhanging shadow of XANA waiting to fall on the earth.

XANA was up to something. Maybe he wasn't immediately attacking, but the A.I. program was definitely working toward some nasty goal. And the Lyoko Warriors were in his way.

Dante glanced about himself checking about his surroundings. He was at the gymnasium meaning he had walked a good four hallways past his first hour Chem class.

Smooth, real smooth.

He was just about to turn around and amble back to his class in what little time he had before the late bell rang when he was hit from behind by an object moving at a high velocity. A simple physics formula for dummies summed up the situation. Mass times a lot of velocity equals mucho force.

In other words: Dante, meet the ground. Ground, meet Dante. (Special thanks to Mallet Percussionist).

It was a spectacular sight to see. Papers went flying, pencils scattered, lost students hurrying to class stopped to gawk, and the late bell rang.

"Oh," groaned a distinctly familiar and female voice, "I'm late."

Shaking the stars out of his eyes, Dante looked over his shoulder…and saw Hallie. She was sprawled out on the floor surrounded by the upturned contents of her book bag and looked rather dazed.

A smile quirked at the edges of Dante's lips. Rising to his feet, he reached down and pulled Hallie to her feet. "It's the first day of school. Every class has a five minute grace period."

Now on her feet, Hallie's eyes regained their focus. The slightly dazed expression remained but the gleam of recognition seemed a sure sign that she was aware of her surroundings.

"You okay?" Dante heard himself asking her.

"Uh…yeah," Hallie replied as she bent down to scoop up her papers. Before he could offer his help, the papers were collected and tucked back into Hallie's book bag. "I just spent too much time ragging on Sakura, that's all."

Dante nodded, and an awkward silence bubbled up between the two. Around the them the crowd of lost students thinned as they found their way to their classes. Dante waited.

He could see them, the words swirling inside of Hallie waiting, wanting to be said, and he saw the hesitance in her eyes signifying the words would remain unuttered. And there wasn't just hesitance. There was something else in her green eyes that Dante could perceive was holding back the tidal wave of words. He saw nervousness, anxiety, dread, and…

There was also…

Fear.

Something went strangely numb inside of Dante. Hallie was afraid…of him.

It was time for Dante to leave.

He didn't get far.

He was only two hallways away from his Chem class when he was grabbed rather firmly by the back of his shirt and spun around to see an extremely nervous, red faced, and pink haired Hallie.

"I'm SORRY!" she shouted. The hue on her cheeks darkened from tomato to beet red. "I know I've been an idiot in the past year, and I should have talked to you about half the stuff I was planning, and that I had no right to do the other half of things that I did, but I was worried, and I'm really, really sorry."

Hallie, relieved yet anxious all over again, kept her eyes firmly on the floor. She had said it, the dreaded apology. The butterflies should be gone by now, not whirling around her stomach at hurricane force wind speeds. Her face was really hot, and he wasn't saying anything, and she was late, and he wasn't moving, and did he really hate her that much?

A soft 'Hal' from by Dante coaxed Hallie to reluctantly raise her head to meet his eyes. Hallie felt her spirits dipping. She should have known a quick blurted out apology wouldn't do the job. Great, they were going to have to have a round two: an in depth discussion. It was just what she was trying to avoid.

"Dantes," Hallie began, "we need to talk." At his that's-great-but-have-you-forgotten-we-have-class look, Hallie added, "Later-ish. What lunch do you have?"

"First."

"Yeah, me too. So…lunch?"

Dante shrugged.

"Great," Hallie continued—awkward—,"lunch them."

Then because she really had to get to her first hour, P.E., Hallie turned on her heel and ran for the gym. Behind her, Dante stayed put for a moment and then continued on to Chemistry.

She had called him Dantes. Maybe…

Maybe…


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5:**

The next four periods passed in a blur for Dante. After Chemistry he caught a flash of pink leaving the gym as Hallie left for her second hour class. Whatever that class was Dante was a bit to stressed to bother with pulling up her schedule from the attendance office's computers. He believed that would fall into the department reserved for "stalkers" as Sakura had once described his electronic meddling with schedules. She hadn't complained when he had arranged for an al school holiday the day of final exams with very convincing internet rumors about a flu epidemic. Dante repressed a chuckle as he thought back to that incident. If he recalled correctly the flu had something to do with pigs…

His classes had melded into a brain dead combination of hallways, P.E., Trig, and history until Dante found himself walking toward Kaddic's cafeteria for lunch. He decided to skip the lunch line. If Hallie really was going to talk then he was going to milk every second out of the 1,800 seconds the half hour lunch period allowed him. And he wasn't even counting the remaining seconds of the five minute passing period between classes gave him (150). Dante found the lunch table easily. The group had staked it out three years ago in the guys' freshmen year. It was located within a convenient distance from the emergency exit, the fire exit, and the regular entrance/exit into and out of the cafeteria.

Sakura and Drew had reached the cafeteria and the table first. It made sense seeing how the two were in the same fourth hour physics class. Brief conversation brought up the topic that while Drew and Dante both had P.E. 2nd hour they had different coaches, and that Hallie and Sakura were in the same history class.

Riley arrived shortly after the bell signaling the end of the passing period, and then finally 1,426 seconds after Riley appeared Hallie made her entrance.

Dante stopped and looked at Hallie then. He really looked at her. He hadn't honestly really seen her since two weeks before she fell into the digital sea in April four months ago.

Her hair was pink and curly. She'd gathered it in a ponytail where it waved down to an inch or so below her shoulders. Thin black glasses framed her green eyes and her skin was a slightly pinkened ivory. The last time he had seen her with pink hair and green eyes on earth she had been a scrawny 13 year old going on 14 who had been about to move and leave Kaddic Middle School and XANA behind her.

The second time he had crossed paths with her teen self, she had been wearing contacts that made her eyes appear a dark brown. She had dyed her hair brown and straightened out the curls and had had faithfully kept a sprayed on tan for the majority of the school year. Yes, she had grown, but now he was seeing Hallie as herself, as a 16 year old going on a very far away 17.

The nervous look in her eyes again, Dante noticed. It was very similar to the rolling in his gut._ She's as nervous about this as I am._ But for the life of him, Dante didn't know why. But if it would make this any easier…

Dante stood. Sakura and Drew looked at him curiously, but Drew had a knowing look on his face. Drew knew what was about to be resolved.

"Have fun with your interrogation," he offered brightly.

"Interrogation? What interrogation?" Sakura asked.

"I'm not going to interrogate her," Dante muttered taking in Drew's comment with slight disdain. _She_ had been the one who wanted to talk. He was just going to get answers.

"Who?" Sakura asked becoming even more bewildered while Dante made a beeline for Hallie.

"Drew," he heard Sakura plaintively ask with much confusion, "who's being interrogated?"

"Don't worry your pretty head over it," was the last thing Dante heard before he was outside and Hallie had trailed behind him. The courtyard outside was moderately filled with groups dotting the perimeter claiming their territory for the rest of the school year. He felt eyes on him and most likely on Hallie too probably deeming them if not a couple but a potential couple to be watched by the gossip mills.

It couldn't be helped, Dante decided, but he picked an empty spot out of casual hearing distance but within plain sight of all the student body. He sat down and Hallie followed his action while making sure there was at least a foot of space between them.

And all was quiet…except for the loud murmur of chatting students discussing their first day back in purgatory. Absentmindedly Dante noticed a crumpled newspaper blow through the court yard much akin to sage brush, and he caught the inked out version of the eye of XANA. Dante's eyes narrowed. Yes, the last thing he needed was a reminder of the cause of the awkward moment between himself and Hallie.

"Spit it out," he said finally. The nervous flickering of her eyes from him and then to the ground was unnerving and slightly annoying. "Whatever you have bottled up in there just let it loose."

"I'm sorry," was Hallie's immediate response.

Of course

"Uh," with a cautious hesitancy that reminded Dante of walking on egg shells, Hallie slowly and carefully asked her next question. "Did it work?"

"Did what work?"

"My program," again with the walking on egg shells, "program exorcism."

Dante sighed. Program exorcism, Hallie's pet project. The program, after Dante read its code when instigated located and flagged all virtual beings with certain programs attached to their frame and gave the supercomputer operator the choice to materialize all flagged personal.

In common English the program looked for all bearers of the Code Lyoko Code on Lyoko, and not only allowed the monitor of the supercomputer the choice to devirtualized them at will, but it also had an if clause in there that in essence stated if a bearer of a Code Lyoko Code reaches 0 life points, then they are devirtualized off of Lyoko back to Earth. To put it even more simply, Dante missed his former invincibility.

"It worked."

The light that suddenly popped into Hallie's wide was blinding.

"Really?" she asked eagerly. "It really worked? It took?"

"Yes," he conceded. "It really worked. And I really dislike the authorized personal view only clause stuck to the program. I can't change it."

"And it serves you right. You would ruin my beautiful code and make it useless. And I'm sorry." Hallie concluded.

Dante rolled his eyes. Again with the apologies. "Yeah, well, I don't hate you for it, but I would have appreciated a warning about what was going on."

Hallie's bright, happy eyes dimmed as the light waned. "I couldn't risk it. If anyone had known, well…the best kept secret is the secret not told. I had to keep this from XANA and by extension, you."

Dante nodded grudgingly acknowledging the point.

"And I'm sorry for avoiding you guys on, during, and before the field trip," Hallie continued.

Dante quirked a grin. "Anything else?"

Hallie stopped and pondered. Her eyebrows drew together, and her hand cupped her chin as an expression of great seriousness descended on her face.

"Let's see…um…program…field trip…secrecy…idiocy…_That_…, so, um, no." Hallie concluded. "I don't think I'm forgetting anything at least."

Dante nodded, and Hallie observed a noticeable shift in his facial muscles wiping away all good humor and emotion and replacing it with a placidly polite gaze. Hallie groaned and buried her face in her hands.

"Great," she said. "I did forget something, didn't I? You're closing yourself off."

Dante stood. "It's fine Hal. It's not your fault anyway."

"What did I do?" Hallie asked as she trailed the retreating Dante through the courtyard. "C'mon, I'm trying to make this better. I'm trying to make this work. I'm trying to make sure we're still friends, Dantes."

At her name for him, Dante stopped and let her catch up with him.

"It's nothing you have any control over," he said finally. He turned to walk away again, but once again Hallie was there blocking his path.

"Can I see your schedule?" she asked.

For a moment Dante hesitated. Should he? Yeah, there was no harm done, and she seemed fine, but…

"Hallie," he said as he decided to face the issue head on. He couldn't run from it forever. "Hal, what do you remember?"

Hallie blinked her eyes at him. "About what?"

"What do you remember…" _about me?_

Really, the worry had been looming over him since he had tentatively located her presence again on Lyoko before they sent the search party in. He had always wondered and feared that Hallie's time in the digital void had wiped her already amnesiac mind of any memory of Lyoko and in consequence him.

But she had called him Dantes…her nickname for him before she even acquired amnesia. But before her fall she had called him Dantes even with the amnesia intact.

But still…

"Dantes?"

Dante broke out of his brooding to see a concerned and slightly confused Hal looking at him inquisitively. _Great, now she's fretting over me._

"Here," he said and shoved his schedule into her hands. Hallie took it eagerly and pulled out her schedule to compare and contrast periods, classes, and teachers.

"Hey, we have the same math class!" she chirped happily.

Casually leaning over her pink head, Dante glanced down at the two schedules, and sure enough sixth hour was Algebra 2 with one Dott. Dante shook his head. He had heard horror stories from his peers about Ms. Dott and her teaching. Apparently, she was good at one on one teaching but terrible at teaching a class.

"Just like last year," Hallie finished. Her smile was happy and her eyes distant as she reviewed the past.

Maybe…

"Anyway," Hallie said reorienting her train of thought, "what do I remember about what?"

Dante paused and, coward that he was, rephrased his question.

"What's your first memory of Lyoko?"

Hallie wrinkled her forehead as she frowned in thought.

"Well…I found the supercomputer…" Dante knew when the memory hit her because her nostrils flared and she rounded on Dante with announce flaring in her eyes.

"…And you kidnapped me!" she stated her slightly outraged. "I mean seriously, why? Why bring that up? Of all the memories I have of Lyoko—,"

"You remember that?" Dante asked, interrupting.

Cocking an eyebrow and placing her hands on her hops, she replied. "Of course."

"And your memories of Lyoko, you have them," Dante replied eyes serious. But looking deep inside, Hallie could almost see a small glint of hope. And she understood.

Sighing in exasperation and resignation, her next voice was a combination of reassurance, and the firm impressment of the truth in her sentence. "Dantes, I remember everything."

And she went on to state examples from the "everything" she remembered. She remembered Lyoko. She remembered how she found the supercomputer, how she was virtualized onto Lyoko…

(Guilty, Dante admitted to her accusation of kidnapping her. Yes, telling a curious 13 year old to explore the lower levels in order for her to enter a scanner and then to manipulate the scanner and the supercomputer to virtualize her onto Lyoko so that they could meet face to face was his doing and technically he supposed could be classified as kidnapping. But he hadn't manipulated. He had merely…given her a push in the right direction).

…meeting him, escaping him (he let her go), forming the second generation of Lyoko Warriors, various X attacks, why she had to move, the taxi accident which ended up giving her amnesia making her forget all previously listed events, finding Lyoko again under the guise of Stella Stern…

All throughout this Dante's mind whirled. Something changed on his face, in his expression. It was noticeable enough that Hallie faltered in her list of events to meekly asked, "Dantes?"

And he exploded. Letting out a whoop of delight, Dante picked her up and whirled her around in the air laughing at the top of his lungs while she shrieked in surprise. Letting her go, he left her to stumble while she tried to right her spinning world as he collapsed back into the grass in contentment. Plopping down next to him, Hallie muttered, "You're as bad as Drew." And Dante chuckled, pleased.

"I think the lunch bell rang," he said offhand while gazing at the clouds. "It would explain the empty courtyard."

"Shoot," Hallie muttered as she went scrambling for her bag. "I didn't even get to eat my lunch.

"What class so you have next?" Dante asked without even needing to. He had already memorized her schedule after the brief glance over her shoulder earlier. Chemistry with one Johnson in room 1314. After that was Algebra 2 with Dott.

"Umm…," rustling as she rifled through her backpack. "Chem with aJohnson in room 1314." Dante grinned and waited.

"Oh!" Hallie exclaimed and soon he saw her head looking down at him as she held his schedule out to him. "Here you go."

Squinting against the sun, Dante flipped over and grabbed her extended hand, his large hand wrapping almost completely around her smaller one and used it to levy himself up. Calmly removing his hand from hers, he took his schedule-not that he needed it.

"To class then?" he asked.

Hallie nodded and the pair once again friends walked out of the courtyard.

Inside the cafeteria hovering by the windows Drew snorted.

"See," he said. "what did I tell you? That they would kiss and make up and the group dynamics would be restored."

"You were right about everything accept the kiss." Sakura pointed out dryly before she tuned and walked back to their lunch table where their things were guarded by watchdog Riley. "Thank goodness. The last thing we need in the Lyoko Warriors are relationships and drama galore. XANA is quite enough."

Drew sighed and shook his head. "I don't know why you were worried. Those two are like ham and applesauce, peanut butter and jelly, Anakin and Padme, Beauty and The Beast, tin and foil, Romeo and Juliet—,"

"Enough!" Sakura bit out her voice tearing through the air. "They will _not_ get together. End of story. Now where did my brother go?"

Drew glanced back out the window and noted the casually close distance between the retreating backs of the disputed pair. For now the two were friends, close friends with close bonds, but merely friends.

"I do believe that he has scurried off to history class without me," Drew said mock serious. "Will you then, fair damsel, do me the honor of escorting me to class?"

Sakura slung her bag over her shoulder, looked at Drew's dramatic pose—courtesy of the drama club and a film director father—, raised an eyebrow and answered.

"No."

Drawing in a breath and bringing a hand to his chest Drew spoke to an imaginary audience. "The lady wounds me, but of course the path of true love never did rum smoo—whoa!"

Marching up behind the posing poseur thespian, Sakura grabbed him by the top of his backpack and pulled Drew backwards towards the hallway.

"Come along Shakespeare. We have class."


	6. The Trouble with Truffels Part 1

**A/N 8-26-09: What can I say? It's longer. A lot longer. And this is only part 1. Oh, I finished writing the attack! And I haven't updated in so long because I have been finishing up the attack, and typing it, and then I lost access to the internet and a word processor with RMH on it for two weeks, and by then band campt and all its glorious 8 hr days started up, and then finally school has started, and I'm a senior now... Anyway the reason ya'll are getting ch6 again is because I listened too Captain Mayhem's criticism and responded to it by making this longer, so you guys have more of the plot of the attack to work with then the 6 pages I gave you before. Now you have 22. Enjoy!**

**Chapter 6:**

Life at Kaddic High Academy (KHA) continued on deceptively normal for the Lyoko Warriors after the front page fiasco. Or perhaps one should say abnormally because no follow up X-attack followed the front page printing of XANA's symbol. But as advised by a wise man beyond his years (Sakura and Hallie's new and already beloved history teacher) don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It was a testament for how much the two revered their teacher that they didn't adopt any sort of paranoia about how a devastating attack against all mankind and humanity hadn't occurred and taken the world by storm…

…unlike Drew.

"It's evil," he said with utter conviction to Hallie and Sakura one school day at lunch early in the first school term.

Now, if he had been talking about the obscene homework load, the cafeteria food, XANA, or the blatant assault on his manhood—courtesy of an obligatory performance in the upcoming choir show's musical number _That's How You Know_ straight from Enchanted (someone in a position of great power and influence hated Drew)—Sakura and Hallie would have understood. Not stared at him as if he had been abducted by, and brainwashed into a ranting hater of all things cute, cuddly and girly in the world.

"It's evil," he reaffirmed leveling a solid glare on the offending object.

It was once again lunch, and the girls and Drew were alone at their lunch table inside. Maybe it was the lack of male sanity at the table that caused Drew to be so irked by the object. Maybe it was because he was corralled into rehearsals where he had to sing, dance, and practically prance about in a polo shirt and khakis while carrying fake yellow flowers that caused him to be so disturbed by an object that normally he would have rolled his eyes at, scoffed, and belittled.

"Evil! Sha-La!"

Maybe his irrational disturbation with the round, fluffy, yellow, soft, squishy stuffed animal (thing! Agent of Evil!) had to do with its uncanny mimicry ability.

"See!" Drew shouted encouraged by the high pitched syrupy sweet mechanical voice and pounded his fist on the table (all book bags, cutlery and food lept an inch into the air). "It admits it!" And he proceeded to glower at the abomination. "What I would do to be able to feed it to a proper Bunsen burner."

At his last statement all brushing off of the blonde's stressed, slightly screwball, and inane comments ground to a halt. Green eyes flew out of an Algebra 2 textbook and met brown eyes that had been jerked from a far away blissful cloud. A threat had been made against their beloved. Steps must be taken.

The Algebra 2 book slammed shut. "Don't you dare," Sakura softly warned as she scooped up the beloved stuffed animal.

"Dare! Sha-La!" the yellow stuffed animal parroted.

"Yeah," Hallie joined in. "Don't hurt Chibi-chan."

"Hurt Chibi-chan. Sha-La!"

Egged on by the high pitched, sickeningly sweet mechanical voice, Drew lunged and yelped when Hallie bashed his fingers with her math book.

"Ow!"

"Leave Chibi-chan alone!" Hallie said.

Drew grimaced and faced off his opposition. Two girls protecting one stuffed animal. Two friends of his protecting one stuffed animal. Two angry, resourceful friends wielding cutlery and math books protecting one measly frou-frou stuffed animal.

Was one stuffed animal really worth physically injury and the ire of his friends?

"Sha-La!"

No, one stuffed animal wasn't worth it.

But the spawn of the devil himself was.

Drew lunged; Sakura hid the beloved plushy. Hallie began to wield her textbook. And male sanity arrived at the table along with some female sanity.

"What is going on here?!" barked out an unmistakable shrill, high pitched, adult, female voice.

The trio at the table collectively flinched and dutifully turned to face their principal, one Sissy Delmas. She hadn't changed much over the years. She still wielded authority with an iron fist and did not take kindly to being wrong, but some maturity had seeped into her. The spiteful, scheming schoolgirl their parents had known had been left in the past. But Sissy, as principal of Kaddic High, was still a force to be reckoned with.

Hallie was the first among the trio to make a response. Sakura was still protecting Chibi-chan, and Drew was swiftly correcting his mid-lunge stance. For a moment doubt flickered in Hallie's mind. Drew had threatened to burn Chibi-chan. True, Chibi-chan wasn't _hers_ technically. Chibi-chan was Sakura's. And Drew was her friend. Should she really sell him out for a stuffed animal?

She paused, and her eyes flitted to the cute, round, soft, and yellow Chibi-chan gazing back at her with adoring eyes. Like butter in a microwave Hallie melted.

"Feed it to a proper Bunsen burner. Sha-La!"

Oh yes, Hallie decided as all protective maternal instincts kicked into overdrive. She should.

She turned and, sounding like an indignant girl ready to have retribution paid for the wrong did to her, spoke.

"Principal Delmas, Drew—"

_Drew's trying to destroy Chibi-chan!_ That was her complete thought. That was what Hallie would have said if not for the restraining hand that was resting on her shoulder.

Hallie paused and looked over her shoulder for the person who was holding her shoulder and saw Dante. She had a choice to make then: listen to Dante and his clear nonverbal message to _drop it_, or listen to the fuming, indignant, overprotective side of her screaming to make Drew pay. Then the thought came again: It's only a stuffed animal.

And she deflated. With a gusty sigh that expelled all the hot air out of her, Hallie managed to mumble, "Never mind." And with that she turned back to her math textbook.

Riley and Dante, having conquered the lunch lines, chose their lunch seat with strategy determined to separate the feuding parties. Principal Delmas left but not before having a last word with the group.

"Keep the noise down. And Stern!" both Stern siblings flinched and reluctantly made eye contact with their principal. "If I see that Tribble again during school hours, it will be confiscated."

And with a chorus of "yes ma'am" she was gone. And Sakura was left to glower at her lunch.

"It's a Truffel," she hissed. "Not some geeky, sci-fi, Star Trek relic."

"There, there," Hallie comforted as she patted Sakura's back. "Grown ups can be slow on the uptake sometimes. It comes with having a job and being distracted."

Sakura snorted and grumbled noncommittally as she, with great obvious reluctance, packed away Chibi-chan.

"Bye Chibi-chan," she cooed. "Mommy will see you later."

Across the table Drew groaned. "And I have physics with her next period," he lamented. But his face brightened at the thought that all science classes were all hosted in science labs which were all equipped with Bunsen burners.

"I wouldn't worry," Riley offered. "This Truffel thing is just a fad. It'll pass."

Two female heads shot up and glared at Riley. "Blasphemy!"

"Sakura, Hallie, heal." Dante said coolly. Rolling her eyes, Sakura complied while leveling heated glares at Drew promising pain. Hallie was the only one to try to protest.

"But Dantes," she whined.

"No."

Looking a bit put out and sullen, Hallie complied and was silent. Drew rubbed his temples easing away the oncoming head ache. "We need to get a separate lunch table until this fad passes over, or else we'll kill each other."

"Kill each other, Sha-La!" came a muffled electronic voice.

Glancing between Dante, Sakura, and a quickly becoming enraged Drew, Hallie took preemptive measures.

"I think that's our cue to leave, Sakura. If we hurry we can drop off Chibi-chan in your room and get to class before the bell rings."

Lunch was peaceful at the Lyoko Warriors table after the girls relocated. Not much talking or other forms of communication were carried out. The lunchroom had gotten a lot noisier, and a lot more segregated. All the guys seemed to be slowly but steadily migrating outdoors as all the girls seemed to be moving indoors. An ear piercing shriek followed by high pitched giggles and a chorus of cooing reached Riley, Drew, and Dante. The sounds were annoying and nauseating, and it was very clear to the three at the table why the guy students were moving outside. It was quieter out there without 30 straight minutes of nonstop feminine fawning over plushies.

"It's an attack from XANA," Drew said. "I'm sure of it." Another round of giggles and coos rose up two tables away. Riley ran a hand through his hair and refocused on his meal.

"They're insufferable," he commentated. "We should seriously consider moving outside or investing in earplugs."

A pair of two foam earplugs landed under Riley's nose. Riley followed the direction the earplugs came from. Dante shrugged.

"Hallie hasn't completely lost her sense of pity, and I doubt it's a XANA attack. No towers are active, and XANA specializes in devious, cunning, occasionally subtle, and life threatening attacks that forward his own schemes. Not annoyingly cute attacks."

The Truffel fad had taken the city by storm. Released by Plushy Luv Inc. the small round plushy caught the hearts of females of all ages selling out in stores. Girls loved them. Guys abhorred the obsessive cuteness. As one male interviewer stated when polled over the opinion on the Truffles he had said. "They don't do anything. They sit there, hog all the attention and coo. And the sound chip is (beep) (beep) annoying like (beep)."

The Truffels presence on the Kaddic campus was a swift and deadly invasion. Rumor had it one girl in the boarders dorm received a truffel from a relative before the Truffels had even been released to the public. The girl had opened the box and had melted at the pink soft almost heart shaped plushy. She immediately showed off her new treasure to her roommate. Her roommate melted, and the two took the dorm by storm. The truffel drove the girls dorm nuts and quickly proved to be the biggest thing since soft spread butter. The truffel drew such a crowd that it took teachers investigating the absences of their female students to break the crowd up and send them to class.

As soon as the little bundles of joy were released in stores almost every girl on the KHA campus went out and got their own. The truffels were soft, huggable, squishable, adorable colors, and just plain cute. Their cuteness which was accented by the sound microchips and speakers implanted in the ears and mouth respectively which recorded spoken phrases inside its hearing range and played them back in its sweet and cute voice usually ending the statement with the Truffel trademark "Sha-La!".

There were three responses to the Truffels so far. 1. Adoration (read: fanaticism). 2. Contempt (read: pure, unadulterated loathing. 3. Indifference (read: apathy).

Predictably all girls on the KHA campus fell under the first category while the other half of the student body (the guys) fell under the remaining two. While all girl students adored the truffel (the jury was out among the female teachers) surprisingly not all owned one whether it was due to a low allowance, the stores being sold out, practicality, or loyalty.

It was a bit of a mystery between Sakura and Hallie why exactly Drew hated Chibi-chan and all Truffels for that matter. They had eventually chalked it up to stress, but rumor had it that a few students in the theater crew had taken the liberty to reprogram a truffel until it was stuck in an infinity loop singing _That's How You Know_.

The second rumor –which backed up the first rumor—said that after the theater tech guys looped the song they amped up the truffel's volume, connected it to a wireless mike, scattered a few speakers around the choir room, and subjected the choir students to a two and a half hour rehearsal of non stop Alvin and the Chipmunks helium singing of _That's How You Know _before the angry mob of choir students tracked down the perpetrators and threatened their lives.

Sakura and Hallie were never able to have the rumor clarified. Whenever they asked Drew or any person allegedly involved their subject would clam up, and in Drew's case start attributing fiendish qualities to all Truffels everywhere.

Sakura and Hallie, like all the girls at Kaddic and possibly in the city, had melted and became full enthusiastic participators in the fad.

"Peer pressure and the need to fit in must be a powerful force," Riley mused aloud to Drew during history during the early days of the Truffel invasion, "for such normally sensible, rational, and level headed girls to turn into such one track, simpleminded lemmings. Or they really are that cute."

Drew had shrugged noncommittally at the time (in the timeline of events the rumored tampered truffel hadn't laid siege to the choir's sanity, yet).

For Dante and Riley the Truffel incident was just a tide to be forborne, a passing fad. Their girls would regain their senses and return to their usual selves and routines. Just like the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, the Dixie Chicks had passed, just like how High School Musical, Camp Rock, Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers would pass, so would the Truffels. In the grand scheme of things, the Truffels were a minor distraction as the group waited for XANA's next move.

For Drew the Truffels were evil. And if by evil he meant disgustingly cute, then yes the Truffels were evil. But Drew was not a weak-minded person who abandoned his convictions after a day or two, or with the first doubt or storm. Even in his questionably sane and irrational state of mind he still convictions. He would not abandon his beliefs unless utterly trumped and proven wrong without a shadow of a doubt. And even then…

Well, suffice it say, Drew tired of not being taken seriously set out to prove his assertion that Truffels were evil. And he was taking Riley and Dante with him. He struck after 2nd hour between passing periods.

"What would it take for you to be convince Truffels are evil?" Drew asked Dante. Not pausing long enough to let Dante reply, Drew surged ahead. "Because if I can convince you that Truffels are evil beyond a shadow of a doubt then the girls are in the bag, possibly. So what will it be: a XANA attack, a tower activating, the mark of XANA…"

"Drew." Drew paused mid-sentence. "Cease." And Drew clammed up.

Dante, looking clean cut in jeans and a button up white shirt, pulled his delusional friend to one of the main hall's stop and talk spots. After a quick glimpse at the clock on the wall to double check that his internal clock was running on time, Dante focused on Drew.

"Drew, you have nothing to worry about. They're just attention hogging toys."

"That's what they all say, and next thing you know, a mob of zombies is attacking," Drew shot back. "Do you really want the creation of an army of zombies made up of the entire female student body on your hands Dante?"

Dante suppressed a groan of annoyance. He settled for running a hand through his hair and looking at the heavens as if pleading for divine patience. "Look, Drew, I have personally inspected and dissected the insides of a Truffel. Other then the elementary coding and software there is no offense toward mankind there."

Drew, Dante could tell, was not convinced, so Dante dove to touch on what a brilliant leap of deduction told him was at the heart of the problem.

"I know you're worried about the girls," Dante didn't have to clarify who exactly the girls were. For the three male Lyoko Warriors only two girls came to mind when the term _the girls_ was used. "But they'll get over it. Just don't let the Truffels get to you so much, and the girls won't be so hostile. And don't threaten Chibi-chan." The last sentence he added as an afterthought.

Drew sighed as he mentally turned over the advice. It was sound advice and came from a sane, technological savvy member of their group. In fact Dante was so tech savvy that even the theater crew came to him time to time when they ran into tech problems…

"Dante," Drew asked as he followed his train of thought, "when exactly did you disassemble a truffel and why?"

A quick pat of the shoulder was his only answer before Drew found himself quite alone in the hallways as Dante strode down the hall at a carefully calculated speed in order to get to class. Drew checked the wall clock and scowled.

30 seconds to get to the library for study hall. This was how school legends were made. Late students engaged in a race to class against a few paltry seconds.

As he slid into the library right as the first toll of the late bell, Drew could barely contain his excitement. Time had been short. The school rules and Assistant Principals had been against him, but he had cleared successfully and without trouble four short hallways, a staircase, an elevator, and a final stretch down the main upper hallway all under half a minute of time. It was a record for students of all ages to admire, and…no one was around to bear witness to his triumph.

"Hey, Della Robia!"

Scratch that last thought. Someone apparently was around looking for him and didn't seem to happy. Drew pivoted on his heel and had to quell his consternation when he saw exactly who was stalking down the hall toward him.

Her name was Sam. She had red hair and the infamous temper to match. She was unpleasant, had a chip on her shoulder the size of a boulder, and didn't like anyone. Her face seemed to have one expression, a scowl. And she only seemed to possess one type of attitude: high strung, easily irritated, and various types of anger and annoyance. She was great at yelling and bossing people around (the reason why she was in charge of rounding up all participants in the choir show to get to rehearsal).

"Sam, what a surprise," Drew said as he tried to be honest (for it was a surprise to have the Grinch prowling the halls during her choir period) and to diffuse the situation. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"No, what are you doing here?" Sam asked, and she shoved her scowling face within centimeters of Drew's nose. "We have rehearsal today!"

"Well, yeah, but—,"

"Right now!"

That threw Drew for a whirl. "Now?" he asked. "But it's third period. I have study hall, homework to finish, notes to complete, and a test to prepare for."

"Well, too bad." Sam snapped. "Your number is rehearsing in T minus five and counting."

Drew bristled. "Now listen Sam," he said. "I'm not in choir. I'm in theater and even then only the club. All I have going on now is study hall in here, the library, where I will be studying. Apologize to Angela for me, but I will not be at rehearsal during third period."

And the two glared at each.

In the end it was the appeals of the choir teacher that made Drew abandon his study period to rehearse and tolerate the altogether unpleasant presence and orders of Sam. If she hadn't been a prodigy choreographer, Drew was certain someone would have put her in her place a long, long time ago.

As it was the third period impromptu rehearsal nearly ruined the rest of Drew's day. At lunchtime he was like a pimple, sore, red, and on the bursting point. But unfortunately for Drew things did not get any better. If anything, things took a turn for the worse.

"Sha-"

"La."

"Sha-"

"La."

"Sha-La!" chorused Hallie and Sakura as they giggled over the video of Chibi-chan saved on Sakura's phone. On screen the yellow Ferby wannabe gurgled and said. "Sha-La!"

"Sha-La!" repeated Hallie and Sakura.

"Sha-La!"

"Sha-La!" they repeated.

And so on and so forth. Drew groaned and looked pleadingly at Dante. "Please," he begged. "If not for my sanity, then for theirs."

Dante looked at Drew's pathetic, despairing and pleading form, and then he looked at Hallie and Sakura.

"Sha-La!" cooed the recorded image.

"Sha-La!" parroted the girls.

It was the last Sha-La that swayed him (the slightly dazed, empty eyes, flushed cheeks, and the inane giggles helped).

"Fine. I'll examine any truffel you bring to me." Dante said. Drew sat straight up with the most relieved expression on his face as one half of his worries melted away.

"Ah gee, thanks Dante."

"But."

Drew's shoulders hunched instinctively. A but was never a good thing. Dante's black eyes gleamed in amusement, and Drew knew that Dante wasn't convinced. Drew bit back a groan as he realized whatever had Dante so amused would probably be at his expense.

"You have to provide the truffels."

And just like that the burden Drew had lost was suddenly back on his shoulders. Well wasn't this just peachy?

Drew Della Robia possessed pride. He was a man of honor and didn't take it well when his dignity or pride was challenged, besmirched, or trod upon. But he had a dilemma on his hands. A desperate dilemma. His two best and closest girl friends were being hypnotized by a spawn of Satan in the form of a plushy. And no one believed him.

But one person halfway believed him. Dante Millard, techno whiz, machine whisperer, and the son of XANA (long story). Well, he may not believe Drew and was only humoring him because of friendship and all that jazz, but apparently Dante was a sadist at heart.

"_I'll examine any truffel you bring to me, but _you_ have to provide the truffles."_

And that was a stipulation Drew was having a hard time bowing too. See, in order to acquire a truffel he had three choices. He could buy one. He could borrow one, or he could take one as in steal one. And he had a problem with all three choices.

Drew refused to lay down one paltry penny of his or his father's money in order to buy that, that fiendish….He had more pride and practicality then to waste money on such a thing as a Truffel. He would not stoop to such a level.

As for borrowing one the only girl he knew had a truffel was Sakura, and she wasn't letting him within a foot of the girls dormitories after his Bunsen burner comment. He should really learn how to hold his tongue. And even if he knew another girl who owned a truffel, how was he supposed to convince her to give up her newest object of affection for a short period of time for the truffle to be dissected and dismembered? No girl would willingly lay down an object they adored and held dear for it to be destroyed.

And the whole stealing a Truffel…It went back to the pride issue. Other then stealing being immoral and a potential catalyst for a catastrophe at his expense, Drew was not desperate enough to stoop to stealing a Truffel. If it wasn't worth buying then it sure wasn't worth stealing.

Which led him back to the puzzle of how he was going to locate a truffel to be dissected. Why, oh why did Dante have to be so irritably annoying sometimes?

"Robia! Pay Attention!"

Drew jerked back into reality with the acrid tones of Sam yelling at him. Great, as if his day wasn't complicated enough without her ragging on him for no reason….ok, he had been a bit distracted, but still!

"Get your act together Robia!" Sam yelled from her perch atop her self proclaimed directors chair. "You love her and are desperately trying to express your affection, so that she can know that she really is the only one you hold dear. You need to be passionate, gentle but with a tinge of desperation and need, but above all you're trying to make her happy not scare her with a scowl or make her feel awkward and lonely by your distant expression. Now get your head into rehearsal and get in time. From the top."

Drew's ire irked as he moved back to his starting position. Curious and inquiring glances were shot his way by his fellow class mates and performers. Some were mild and some murderous at the thought of having to restart the beginning again without much progress being made in the rehearsal. They had been rehearsing the same set for the past 10 minutes and constantly restarting it because of Sam's keen, scrutinizing eyes catching the smallest imperfection and calling the group out on it. Drew simmered as half the group in their annoyance turned on him.

_Please, please, let this rehearsal end._

He schooled is features and waited listening for musical cues and counting measures before falling into his routine but this time putting more effort into the action bit. _More emotion, you're wooing her _and he carefully circled his female partner, Angela. The rest of rehearsal passed painfully slowly, but rehearsal did pass. After one last round of announcements, updates, and goals rehearsal was dismissed.

As much as Drew would love to bolt and head for the showers before the rest of the boarder students hit the showers, he had a mission. He'd stop by Lost and Found and see if any lonely, lost, and loathable Truffels were up for grabs, or at least that's where he had planned to go, and that's what he had planned to do before he realized halfway through an outside courtyard that he had an audience.

_Looks like I'm going to be shelling out 30 bucks for one of those_ things _after all. What has the world come to, and what are _they _doing?_

Indeed what were _they_ doing, and who were _they_?

The muffled whispers, light giggles, and horrified gasps were easily identified. Drew was being followed by a group of girls. On any other day but today his ego would have been stoked for a week. As of the moment Drew was creeped out and annoyed more than anything. They thought they were being sneaky, but he could hear them.

"…just go ahead and ask…"

"I can't! You saw him at rehearsal…"

"It's not that hard. Just go up and ask."

"Oh, I'd love to see you try. This is personal."

"Oh, for Pete's sake. Fine!"

_Aw great, now some chicks are going to bother me. Can't a guy plot in peace?_

Annoyance aside, Drew wasn't too put out to find that the chick that was going to bother him was his dance partner, Angela. He was definitely surprised but not as annoyed.

He was curious about her followers, three girls he recognized from rehearsal. One was tiny with straight brown hair in a bob, Mary, if he remembered correctly. Another was blonde with glasses who was named Holly, and finally there was a black haired girl with great legs named…

_Aw, shoot. Cursed memory. Sarah? Sally? Sophia?_

"Hey Drew," Angela called while she smiled up at him. As he gave her a brief greeting Drew's eyes flicked from Angela and back to the last mystery girl.

_It starts with an S. I know it starts with an S. Geez, you'd think I'd remember a girl's name especially with legs like those…No. Think…focus…S…Santa Maria! No…_

"We," Angela continued while waving a hand to include all girls present as part of her we, "have a problem."

_Sakura! No…_

"You see, well…uh…" Angela's face clouded as she tried to take the words in her head and put them into a proper, coherent sentence.

_Shannon? Sydney? Stephanie?_

"You remember the Truffel incident, right?" Angela finally ventured. It was rhetorical question. All members of the choir show knew about the Truffel incident. They had lived it. The memory of the incident that would bond them forever with bonds of shared trauma. Then Angela seemed to pick up on the vacant expression in Drew's eyes. "Drew?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Drew asked. The word Truffel had caught his attention.

"Do you remember the truffel incident during rehearsal?" Angela repeated.

Drew's face shifted into one of disdain. "Is that a rhetorical question?"

Angela flushed and began stammering. Her friends jumped to her aid.

"You now Dante Millard, correct?" Holly asked.

Drew nodded not seeing where these questions were coming from. It was practical common campus knowledge who was in the "group" Drew, Riley, Sakura, Hallie, and Dante had formed. "Yeah, why?"

"To put it simply those jerks who hacked the truffel during rehearsal which caused the Incident have struck again. They've attacked our Truffels."

Horror (and comprehension) dawned.

"Your truffels are singing _That's How You Know_ nonstop? The fiends!"

Mary (the nervous one from earlier) giggled.

"Not exactly," Angela said. "All of their truffels have been hacked. I don't have a truffel—,"

"Yet," said the mystery girl. (_Stormy?)_

Shooting an annoyed glance at said mystery girl (_Shayna?_) Angela continued. "Mary's is singing _Mary had a little lamb_, Holly's is singing _Deck the Halls_; and Susan's is singing _Oh Susanna_."

_Susan! I knew it started with an S!_

"That's terrible, but what does this have to do with me or Dante?" Drew asked. The answer was niggling at the back of his mind.

"Dante's a tech whiz, right?" Holly asked.

"Like, a miracle worker, correct?" Susan (_Susan!_) followed up.

"Yeah, so what?" Drew asked.

"We—well, I," Angela said, "was wondering if their truffels could be fixed. And Dante sounds like the only person who can fix them."

Drew shook his head. "Lots of guys with an unhealthy obsession of technology exist on campus who could and would be more than happy to fix your…truffels."

"But can they keep our Truffels from being hacked again?" Mary asked.

Drew opened his mouth to answer, paused, and then closed his mouth. He knew the answer to that question. He wouldn't admit it or say it, but he knew the answer. _No._

"You see our train of thought." Angela said. "But _we_ don't know Dante. He's not _our_ friend."

_I know where this is going._

"But _you_ know Dante," Angela said. _Yep, I was right. I'm being used._ "You're Dante's friend, and _I_ know _you_."

Drew mentally braced himself for the femine wiles about to be unleashed. Oh, he knew Angela. She wouldn't play dirty, physically at least. She had more respect for herself then to do that, but…

"Drew," already the situation seemed deadly. That sweet, simpering voice was the first clue. "would you _please_ ask Dante to fix their Truffels? Please?"

Now that was low. The voice, the tone, the pleading, and the eyes. Drew only saw eyes that big and wide and sad and pleading when he was being put up for something.

_Resist. Resist! Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. Shoo! Go away!_

But something in Drew's stomach went horribly soft and mushy when he realized he didn't have just one set of eyes pleading with him. No, he had four sets on him. And that was just the eyes. All four had sad, mournful faces looking at him. And they even had their lower lip jutted out just so…

And he felt like a supreme jerk.

_I was wrong. Girls do not fight fair period._

"…fine," Drew muttered as his resolve crumbled. "I'll ask."

_I'm weak._

The four faces brightened instantly as if they didn't know this was going to be the outcome.

"Really?!"

"Thanks Drew!"

"Yeah! Thank you."

And then Drew found himself the center of a four way hug as the girls jumped him. A soft, but unmistakable pressure and warm touch on his cheek caused Drew's mind to grind to a screeching halt and empty of all coherent thought as a tingly flush of warmth flooded every part of his body.

_Oh._

And then they were off, and Drew scrambled to regain his train of thought.

"Thanks Drew," Angela said. "I knew I could count on you."

"No problem," Drew managed to say without seeming too much like a babbling idiot. "Where, where are they going?"

"To get their truffels." Angela explained. "We stashed them inside a duffel bag on the off chance you'd say yes. We left them in the bushes over there." She gestured vaguely around the courtyard's landscaping.

_Hold up. Off chance? I thought she _knew_ she could count on me._

"You're going to give them to me now?" Drew asked instead.

Angela shrugged. "Why not? The sooner you get them, the sooner you can ask, and the sooner they can be fixed."

"I guess…" Drew said as he acknowledged the point. "But are you guys ok with someone cutting up your Truffels?"

Angela shook her head. "Yes. You see Dante fixed the Truffel from the Choir Rehearsal Incident, so that it would stop singing. When Brittany got Barry back, he looked as good as new."

"Barry?"

"Barracuda." Angela answered. "Don't ask. You don't want to know."

Holly, Mary, and Susan returned with the duffel bad, and Drew winced as he caught the musical strains seeping from within.

"Falalalalalalalala..."

"It followed her to school one day, school one day, school one day…"

"Cause I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee…"

_This is so screwed up._ Drew thought, but he didn't have time to dwell on the thought. Another round of hugs and kisses followed leaving him dazed and a tinsy bit high. And then it was just Drew and the truffels. Drew stared down at the bag.

"Deck the halls with bows of holly!"

"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb…"

"Oh Susana! Don't you cry for me..."

_Well, I needed to lay my hands on some Truffels without stealing, buying, or borrowing any…_

"Mission Accomplished." And Drew smirked a very smug smile.

…

Word soon got around the choir and theater circles that Dante Millard would willingly accept truffels in order to debug and hacker proof the software for free, and that Drew Della Robia was the willing middle man in the process. Well, the fact that Drew had subtly encouraged the spreading of the word helped in its far reaching status to the point that the news spread outside of the choir and theater circles into the school. In two days Drew had as many Truffels for Dante to examine that his heart could desire, and really it all worked out.

The girls gave their Truffels to Drew. Drew gave the dreaded beasties to Dante, and Dante inspected the truffels for any sign of trouble while hacker proofing the software, and the girls could enjoy their plushies without fear of sabotage. It all worked out, for the most part.

"So, Dante. Whatcha got?" drew asked as he squeezed himself through the doorway into Dante dorm. Really the lucky duck had the equivalent of a two man dorm room all to himself. Meaning he had lots of space which he was now putting to good use storing all the truffels. As Dante moved another pile of tied pillowcases to the side so Drew could find a place to sit, Drew noted that Dante's room was getting more cramped.

Drew surveyed the immediate interior of the dorm. Backpacks, duffels, and sacks of all shapes and sizes dotted the room piling up into their own land formations. The only unaffected part was the desk/work bench where Dante deconstructed, and reconstructed the Truffels. Single truffels were perched in herds on top of Dante's dresser and mirror each tagged with their name, status, owner's name, and picture.

"I finished Jane's, Molly's, Sky's, Alex's, and Summer's truffels. Yesterday night I started the band's flute section's truffels after I finished the clarinet's. I'll start the student council's this evening, and the dancer's on the weekend. All the finished ones, including the writing, DDR, and HOSA clubs, are tagged and by the door."

Drew nodded. He glanced around the room of silent Truffels. "Thanks for showing me how to take the batteries out." He commented. Dante grunted as he crouched over the innards of his current patient. Drew shuddered to think of the insanity of having an entire roomful of Truffels mimicking him and ending all his sentences with _Sha-la!_

"The pick-up box idea worked." He continued instead. "Riley's manning it giving the Truffels back to their owners." Drew said as he began to move the parcels of Truffels. "Although he's been saying something about shifts. That or making the owners take the batteries out of their truffels before they drop them off."

"Before they drop them off, Sha-la!"

Drew jumped a foot in the air. "Egad! I thought you took all the batteries out," he shouted at Dante. Drew nearly face palmed when he saw the totally unapologetic smile on Dante's face.

"Sorry. Systems check."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." Drew muttered. He slouched against the wall as he went over the checklist.

Twinkletoes, check. Happyfeet (grimace), check. Sonny, check. Chad, check. Zora, check. Nico, check. Gravy? No, Grady, check. Tawnee, check.

"Sheesh," Drew said as he went over the last seven names. "Some people watch way too much TV."

Dante hummed noncommittally. "And…done." He sat up from his hunched over position. "And I believe those," he gestured at the So Random Truffels, "are a herd belonging to one owner."

"Eh, figures. Girls." Drew said as if that one word explained the mysteries of the universe. "So," Drew said as he glanced over at Dante.

Dante raised an eyebrow at Drew's busybody tone. "So, what?"

"Find anything? Besides the fact that the hardware put into the truffles is amazingly cheap and that the software is so easy to manipulate it's almost an insult for someone of your caliber to make it unhackable." Drew finished.

Dante frowned. "Don't put words into my mouth. I never said any of that."

"But you've implied it."

"Whatever. And no, I haven't seen anything strange, abnormal, or nefarious that can be attributed to why Truffels are so annoying and can influence girls the way they do that can be attributed to XANA or evil in general."

"Nothing? At all?" Drew asked. "Are you sure?"

"Positive." Dante said flatly. "If XANA had anything to do with the truffels I would have found in at lest one of the 279 truffels I have dissected and hacker proofed. I would have detected it on the first day of business before we removed the batteries, and I would have sensed it over the week when I opened up my room to all the Truffels of the school. There's nothing there Drew."

Drew didn't respond. He clearly wasn't convinced. Dante sighed. Drew was stubborn.

"I'll keep looking, but…" Dante trailed off.

"But there's nothing there, right. Sure." Drew said as he slung a duffel over his shoulder. "I'm heading out. Thanks."

Drew dropped his parcel onto a commandeered rolling chair (the ones only teachers had) and began to push his load down the hallway towards the elevator. Absentmindly, he fiddled around his pockets for his ipod. Soon the soothing sounds of electric guitars filled his ears. He could always think better with some sort of background noise playing.

Drew had a problem. He knew, knew that those Truffels were trouble. It had nothing to do with paranoia but a gut instinct deep down that his dad had always told him to listen to. It was an unwavering certainty. No good would or could come from the truffels. It was a nagging, persistent thought. He felt wrongness when he saw them.

But even though Drew knew something was off about the Truffels he hadn't found what it was yet. It was like there was nothing wrong with the truffels Dante had been examining.

Drew wouldn't delude himself. He wasn't Dante. Dante was the XANA expert. There was apparently some connection stretching between Dante and XANA. Drew didn't get all of it. What he did get was that as soon as XANA showed his hand—activated a tower and such—Dante would know. And Dante wasn't the only sort of XANA detector. Hallie was known for, at times, uncanny premonitions before major attacks occured. So between the two they had an early warning system.

But Hallie was currently…_distracted_ (and that was putting it mildly), and Dante couldn't find anything wrong. Their two XANA detectors weren't detecting XANA.

_Well, maybe it's not XANA._ Drew thought. He paused for a moment to ponder. _Nah._ _Just because we haven't found anything doesn't mean there's nothing to find. It just means that to find it I have to look harder. Or…_

Drew never got to finish his thought. He was ambushed by a raging, berserker, perennially suspicious, and over protective Truffel Owner.

"Drew Della Robia!"

For once Drew wished that the gal who had the gall to use his full name was Sam. He knew hot to handle Sam, but with this user of his name he knew he wouldn't be given a fighting chance. Sakura was like that when she was mad.

All of Sam's orders paled in comparison to the fury Sakura rained down when enraged.

"What are you trying to pull?" She said (read: screamed). Drew winced. Why, why, why did he have to have a soft spot for the girl in front of him? Why? Why did he have to go weak kneed around the one girl that when enraged made Sam's unpleasantness seem as cheery as Mary Poppins in comparison.

"Pull?" he asked.

"Yes," Sakura repeated. "Pull. What scam are you running? Are you trying to destroy all the Truffels?"

_If only,_ Drew thought wistfully. A dumb idea though. He'd have hundreds of angry girls chasing him down not just one. _Oh wait, she's still talking._

"—because you certainly aren't doing this out of the kindness of your heart. ("Heart! Sha-la!" _Oh great. She brought _it_ with her_). If you try to destroy one—,"

Drew had had enough. Soft spot or no, one could only take so many barbs, acerbic words, unfair and untrue accusations, and clear doubt of one's character and before one could have an edge in otherwise in order to defend one's self.

"You'll what? Call the Truffel police? Tell the principal. I'm not doing anything wrong, and the whole shebang wasn't my idea anyway. I just got entangled in it."

Sakura shot him a credulous look. "Yeah, right."

She was clearly not convinced. See this is why Drew didn't get girls. They used their ability to talk in circles around others to stab others in the back instead of coming out front with what was wrong. And they held a mean grudge.

Drew bit back a frustrated growl. He didn't have time for this. They were getting nowhere fast. He should just go. Not that Sakura would let him.

"Hey! Don't walk away from me!"

The change over Drew was immediate. He paused mid-step out of the hall. If Sakura had focused any of her suspicions and distrust of Drew she would have cued in on the signs that she had overdone it. She had pushed him too far, had put one too many straws on his back, crossed the line, and pushed him over the edge.

The look in Drew's eyes had a hard, cold glint and his voice was low and strangely calm and controlled.

"Well out of the blarney that you just shot at me you did manage to nail one thing on the head. It's true I don't like Truffels, and you want to know why? Because they've changed you. The Sakura I knew didn't go moony over a plushy. She didn't close herself off from others and attack those thought differently the she did (_Well, now that he thought about it…_), and she didn't accuse them of things without any basis for her accusations. Now if that doesn't make that toy evil then I don't know what does. Twisting a person's character from better to worse seems evil to me, but I would never reek a trail of senseless destruction over anything anyone held dear. You've changed Sakura, or maybe you were never the person I thought you were."

Some of the anger seemed to have drained out of Sakura's sails after Drew's tirade after he had finished giving her a piece of his mind. She seemed stricken, a dash dazed, and she sported a faint hurt demeanor about her. It was as if she had awoken from a dream to find someone she held very dear irrationally angry at her.

_Welcome to my world._

"Drew?" she ventured cautiously and blinked as if seeing her surroundings for the first time.

"Save it." Drew said brusquely as he pushed the rolly chair forward. "I don't want to hear it.

And he left her alone in that hall. If he had lingered a moment or paused to spare a thought to look backward he would have seen a rather confused and distraught girl staring about herself in an utterly lost fashion as if she had only just became consciously aware of and did not know how she had managed to get to where she was.

If Drew had paused another second he would have heard a tiny, sugary Alvin and the Chipmunk voice say. "Sakura-chan. Sha-la!" And if Drew had watched for a final second he would see the confused look in Sakura's eyes be replaced with a misty and unfocused look until a more familiar one of adoration and have heard her whisper Sha-la in return.

And if he had witnessed all that he might have found the new approach he needed in his investigation into the most certainly evil yet mysterious Truffels.

It was lunch time again at Kaddic High Academy. Not much had changed in the seating arrangements in the cafeteria. Increasingly fewer guys were found inside, and increasingly more Truffel lovers were moving inside. In fact, as Riley looked around, if he was not mistaken, he was one of the few remaining representatives of the male gender in the cafeteria. Sure the janitor, a few besotted boyfriends, and a few male teachers remained indoors, but there was only a handful, maybe two handfuls of guys in the room. The rest of the cafeteria's population was made up of girls. Sure they were easy on the eyes, but the company was lacking.

_Speaking of lacking…_ The Lyoko Warriors table of 5 had been whittled down to three. After the blow out the other night between his sister and Drew, Sakura had forgone her male friends for more understanding, sympathetic, and female companions. Hallie, ever loyal, had given the guys a sheepish smile and followed Sakura. The two were now somewhere in _there_ amidst a crowd of delighted Truffel owners alternately swapping stories and cooing.

But despite their female friends abandoning them, and his sister being hostile towards Drew, Riley noticed a rise in popularity for himself, Drew and Dante. Sakura may be suspicious of Drew's intentions where the truffels were concerned but hundreds of happy truffle owners smiled on them. Once again female admiration was a good thing, great for the ego, but as Riley discovered the hard way, it was merely platonic. All love was reserved for the Truffels.

Riley turned his attention to Drew. He hadn't been himself for a bit. He hadn't been himself since the Truffels came on scene. Then again Drew hadn't been himself after he started rehearsing for the choir. Now Drew just acted twitchy. He had the most discontent look on his face as he glanced repeatedly between his tray of food and the crowd of girls. Back and forth between sanity and frou frou. And he was muttering to himself. Yes, Drew definitely hadn't been the same after exposure to Enchanted.

Finally, after heaving a groan of absolute reluctance, shoving his tray in front of him and muttering ("I can't believe I'm doing this."), Drew stood.

"Wish me luck." Drew looked up at the ceiling. "I'm going in."

And with surprisingly swift movements Drew mingled into the crowd of girls until he was no longer in sight. Behind enemy lines.

Another tray screeching across the table caught Riley's attention. He looked up and met Dante's serious black eyes. "We can't just let him go in there by himself." Dante said, rather simply.

"Yeah," Riley said as he took his own tray and dumped its contents in the nearest trash can. "You're right. We can't. Let's go."

And two more poor, unfortunate souls crossed over into the Truffel Zone.

Deep inside the crowd Drew maneuvered his way past, around and through the oppressive presence of the horde of giddy Truffel owners. The area was cramped, warm, and heavily scented with perfume. Drew felt his eyes begin to cross and his head start to spin before he reached his target. There she was, Angela Brown, his dance partner in that much dreaded choir musical number, chief gossip, and possessor of knowledge of everything going on in the school. And she was currently in his debt.

Pulling up a chair, Drew plopped down across the table from the surprised and quickly turning curious Angela.

"Ange, I need you to tell me everything you know about Truffels."

From the brightening of her expression and the eager look in her eyes, Drew easily surmised she would have a lot to say about the subject.

Drew found gathering intelligence mind numbing and like looking for a needle, a tiny needle, in a haystack four feet deep that covered the state of Texas. Whatever he was looking for…well that was the problem. He didn't know the question or answer of what he was looking for. The gist of what he was looking for was some info that would prove truffels were evil. Beyond that it was the needle in the second largest US state haystack problem a.k.a. really, really difficult. The facts were mounting against him, and the vital connection and proof was growing more and more elusive.

Well, despite the difficulty level of the situation Drew knew he had at least done something right. Hopefully. He had gone to Angela who had turned out to be a seemingly ceaseless spout of knowledge. Too much knowledge in fact. Drew's head was spinning from all the trivia she'd pumped into him. So much unhelpful, seemingly useless knowledge, to him anyway.

Riley and Dante had listened in on part of Angela's conversation until an odd light appeared in Dante's eyes. Without a word he left to pursue some brilliant, fantastic, pearl of knowledge Angela had said. It had been something jargon, technical, and mathy. Maybe even sciencey. Something about the Truffels speakers and voices and wavelengths and frequencies. Drew frankly was lost. The exchange was vaguely reminiscent fo Trig, but whatever Dante had seen did not appear for Drew.

Riley had even bowed out gracefully at one part using the lunch bell as an excuse. Drew had no such luck. Angela and he shared the same physics class following lunch, and with his open invitation to chat, Drew had earned a companion for the rest of his school day. Well, he couldn't say he lacked company.

…

When Riley found Dante, he found his friend hovering over his laptop and looking at the screen with a look of puzzled concentration. It was predictable, Riley decided. Whenever Dante had epiphanies it involved computers or technology of some sort, but how the fluctuating graphs on the screen, and the innards of a truffel wired into the computer had anything to do with the epiphany was beyond Riley. So he settled to do what he could. Ask questions.

"What's going on?"

A window popped up onscreen, and Dante began to type rapidly. "Did you know that when an object vibrates it produces sound, some audible to human ears, but mostly inaudible?" Dante asked.

Riley shrugged. "Yeah. Basic physics."

Dante pressed ahead. "Sound travels in waves, longitudinal waves to be exact. But sound isn't even. It has areas of high and low pressures, compressions and rarefactions."

_Someone's been reading ahead._ Riley thought. "So?"

"So, I hooked up the average truffel's internal structure to a—," Dante paused and looked over his shoulder at Riley and decided to make the explanation as plain and comprehensible as possible, "a device which measures different waves an object gives off: sound, light, electromagnetic. Well, light is a type of electromagnetic wave, but nevermind."

Riley asked the question. "So?" Which clearly translated as "Your point?"

Dante smiled a chilling smile. "This trufflel shows no abnormalities.

"So Drew's wrong and the rest of the school is right. Truffels are harmless."

Dante chuckled a wry laugh. "If only. My operative verb was _shows_ Riley. There's a lot this Truffel is hiding."


	7. The Trouble with Truffels Part 2

**A/N 8-28-09: **And here it is. The second part and finale of the X-attack. I shall come back later and add notes. For those just tuning in I have added to chapter 6 6,000 additional words, and here are the final 8,180 to complete the XANA attack. Please skim chapter 6 and read its new additions if you have not done so already before continuing on with ch 7. Thank you.

**Chapter 7**

…

"Can you believe it? A new generation of Truffels! Cuter and more loveable then the first. Heaven!" Angela said. Well, squealed. Her face was alight with eagerness and a happy passion that Drew had to marvel at. He had never seen her so alive before.

"They're going to make a new generation of Truffels?" he asked, and he couldn't hid the dismay in his voice. There was going to be more?

Angela paused. "I never thought of that before. I mean, yeah, eventually they'll upgrade." She said. The wonderment in her voice was obvious. And then she was practically jumping up and down bursting with enthusiasm. "Even more Truffels! Won't that be so cool?"

Drew didn't let his initial reaction of dismay take him over. He had caught the abnormality of her sentence.

"What do you mean eventually? You just said there's going to be a new generation of Truffels. Why get so excited over something you already know is going to happen?" _Unless you're a spazz._

Angela shook her head. "No, they've already released the next generation of Truffels. Every girl on campus that owns a truffel owns one of the new generation." Angela screwed her face up in thought. "Well, not everyone."

Drew halted and pulled Angela beside him. "What do you mean?"

…

"I've been tinkering with the Truffel software. It seems that all the truffels are loosely connected to one another." Dante hit a few more keys and on screen a map popped up with a multitude of blinking dots.

Riley leaned in closer. "Where is that?"

"Campus," Dante replied. "But do notice that when I said loosely connected I do mean loosely. Other then being able to pinpoint another Truffel's location, the connection seems quite harmless."

"But why?" Riley asked.

Dante shrugged. "Keeping track of the product's popularity, or finding out who's buying the Truffels as far as I can guess."

Riley nodded and looked again at the screen. The dots were scattered all across campus and varied between clusters and solitary individuals. The dots were all a bright red and blinked in regular intervals at the same time and speed. Except for two solitary dots.

Riley didn't notice them at first. For one the dots were a dark grey almost black and blended in perfectly with the screen's background. For another the two were separated and lost in the sea of red dots, and blinked after considerably different intervals from the red dots.

"I see you've found our anomalies." Dante said, his face grim.

…

Angela's face was calm, and her eyes bore into Drew's with an intense look of seriousness that held him captive.

"The first truffels created were much different then the version we see today. They were more responsive and interactive and captivating. They were the most charming, adorable things a girl has ever seen, but they were too charming, too perfect. The company got nervous and issued a recall. The first generation was taken back and destroyed."

"How do you know all this?" Drew asked her as a growing sense of unease grew.

…

"I have been monitoring the Truffel population screen for days ever since the first truffels came to campus. Up until today I have never seen the anomalies onscreen before. Their presence was only unveiled today. They're truffels, but they're different from the rest. A type of sleeper agent."

"What are you getting at?" Riley asked as he watched one of the grey dots blink. The solemn expression on Dante's face made Riley's heart freeze.

"Drew may be right." Dante finally said.

…

"My Dad works in R&D for Plushy Luv. He helped develop the second generation of Truffels." Angela said. "He said the entire team working on the first generation was sacked. He looked up the blueprints of the first generations of truffels, and combined with what he heard from the first team before they were fired, he didn't like what he saw." Then her voice took on a more bright and upbeat tune. "But I won't bore you with the horror stories."

…

Dante was out of his chair having let Riley slide in. The seriousness of the unveiling that Drew, currently the questionably sane member of the group, may be right had shocking connotations.

"So the Truffels are evil?" he asked.

Dante shrugged, but his body language easily showed just how tense he was. "I don't know. I haven't been able to find any connection to Lyoko or XANA. Right now, all we can do is wait."

…

Drew had been strung along and chatted at nonstop. Now he was going to take a stand and actually find the information he was looking for. With a glint in his eye and steel in his gaze, Drew followed his gut.

"What did you mean when you said that not everyone on campus had the latest version of Truffels?"

Angela stared at him for a minute. Her gaze was blank, not a bad blank, but blank as in not comprehending a situation. And then a sort of recognition dawned.

"You don't know," she said. Her lips began to quirk into a smile as she began to revel in the knowledge she held over him, that she had once thought him privy too. At his comprehension-less, clueless look the triumphant expression grew. "I thought it was obvious. You really don't know."

"I'd love to find out," Drew said a bit more testily then intended.

Angela smiled and patted Drew's hand in a calming gesture. It didn't work.

"The first truffel that came to Kaddic was a first generation truffel. It was a gift from one of the R&D workers to their little sister, Raven Poe. She's a boarder student. She named her truffel Never, and paraded it for all the dorm to see."

"How's she doing?" Drew asked. "Has she been acting strange, unusual, or out of character?"

Angela flipped a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder and pursed her lips in thought. "Not really. Raven's always been a little strange. I don't know why you're asking me though. Just ask Sakura."

"Sakura?" Drew asked with surprise at the sheer mention of the name evident.

"Sakura. Stern." Angela confirmed.

Drew paused for a moment puzzled. "Why?" he asked. Indeed, why ask the girl who had it out for him?

"She's Raven's roommate. She of all people would notice if Raven's been acting odder then usual, and besides, she's the second owner."

"The second owner of what?"

"Of a first generation truffel. Raven received two. She kept the first and gave the second to Sakura. I think Sakura named it something foreign, Japanese. Chobby, Chippy. Cherry."

"Chibi," Drew said. "She named it Chibi-chan." His heart sunk, and his mind whirled.

"That's it!" Angela crowed. "Chibi-chan! So adorable." And Angela commenced to smile softly in a state of bliss.

Drew rapidly rose from his chair. "Well, Angela. It was great talking with you. Cioa."

And, without any regard for decorum or manners, he left. Walking quickly Drew bulled his buzzing phone from his pocket and hit the send button. Instant connection.

"Hello?" he asked.

"_You were right._"

…

"_Excuse me?_"

Riley rolled his eyes at Drew's surprised tone. He looked back at the screen. The red dots, every single one of them, had changed color in unison mid-blink from red to blue. It had been sudden but not altogether unexpected, and the anomalies… Riley caught a glimpse of Dante's face in his peripheral vision. Dante was wearing sunglasses.

"Gloat later. Get to Lyoko, now. XANA's moved."

…

For a moment when Drew had heard he was right he had felt a burst of euphoria. It was like the world shown brighter and all of creation acknowledged his brilliance. He felt like dancing, not dancing in the ballroom sense, but more like a five minute spontaneous victory dance.

And then the reality settled. Grim, stark reality. _He had been right._

"I hate being right." Drew muttered. It meant trouble was here. The oncoming storm had arrived. "So how long until the entire female student body mobs and tries to lynch us?"

"_I don't know. Dante hasn't said anything specific about the attack other than a tower's active."_

"Really now." Drew muttered as he careened around a corner.

"_Yeah."_ Riley replied. _"Although, he did mention that the attack felt concentrated."_

"Meaning?"

"_It has a narrow focus."_

"Right, right." Another corner and turn in the hallway haphazardly navigated. _One of these days_, Drew figured, _someone's going to be coming around the corner when I—_

Smack! Direct impact. Headaches all around. Drew's cell phone flew grandly through the air where it had been thrown as a result of the collision. The mobile clattered to the ground, slid into a wall, and lay still.

"_What was that? Drew? Are you there? Drew?"_

Groaning Drew sat upright and rubbed his aching head. That would leave a mark. A verifiable goose egg. Rubbing his forehead, Drew squeezed open an eye and then the second fluttered open in shock.

Two flickering symbols pulsing in their host's eyes stared back at him. Then just as suddenly they and their host were gone dashing back around the corner.

_It can't be…_

Scrambling to his feet, Drew lurched around the corner only to be greeted by an empty hallway. Bewildered Drew glanced back the way he came and then back down the hallway.

_It couldn't have been…_

Disbelief swirled. It just wasn't possible. It couldn't happen. But the brief smash in with whomever, whatever that thing was had left Drew changed. Now a small bit of fear coiled in his gut and he quickly resorted his priorities. Lyoko could wait. Dante and Riley could handle the tower. Drew though…he had to find the girls.

_And make sure they're alright._

Drew retrieved out his cell phone and noticed that his call with Riley had ended. He hurriedly pulled up his contact list. _Need to call them and Dante._

Before Drew could call any of the three the phone was ripped from his hand. Spinning on his heel, Drew whirled about ready to give the perpetrator a piece of his mind. Instead half his anxieties melted away at the sight of the person in front of him.

"Sakura!" he cried in relief. "You're ok."

Sakura looked at Drew placidly and deftly slid his phone shut. Drew, too relieved to care about the loss of his phone for the moment, continued talking.

"Do you know where Hallie is? We need to get to Lyoko. XANA's a—," Drew's speech faltered slightly as he caught sight of movement in the corner of his eyes, "—ttacking."

He locked in on the new arrival. Another surge of immense relief swept over him when he saw his pink haired friend. For once the world was in his favor. He had been proven correct, and now angry brothers and wannabe boyfriends wouldn't be jumping down his throat for not keeping their girls safe.

"Hallie, good. We have to go." Hallie placidly walked up and took her spot beside Sakura. "A tower's active." The girls stared on passively. "And…we've…gotta…go…" Drew finished as he puzzled over their blank expressions. "Now." No reaction. Not even a blink. Drew sighed in annoyance. "Look Sakura, I know you're annoyed with me for threatening Chibi-chan, but I'm sorry already. Drop the act because we have to go."

Hallie cocked her had at a perfect 45 degree angle away from her shoulder. "Threatening?" she asked.

"Chibi-chan?" Sakura finished.

Drew blinked at their unexpected and unprecedented use of what could be considered telepathy. Then he seemed to take in many things at once. The emotionless set of the girls' faces, the monotone, lifeless voices, and finally their empty eyes. And he remembered.

"_The first truffels were much different from the version we see today…"_

"_Raven received two. She gave the second to Sakura."_

And his own words: _"That's what they all say, and next thing you know a mob of zombies is attacking."_

_Oh no…_

"You guys can't," Drew fumbled for words as he stared from one face to another. "You're Lyoko Warriors. We fight XANA; therefore, we can't be controlled by him."

As if to respond to Drew's hasty rationalization and realization the girls slowly blinked. And in the instant after their blink Drew was locking eyes with two sets of the Eye of XANA in his friends' eyes.

Sakura calmly tossed Drew's cell phone over her shoulder. It landed on the floor with a clatter. Drew did the only sensible thing he could. He shoved his shock into the back of his mind to deal with later and ran.

A moment later Sakura and Hallie were running after him.

_At the factory_

The supercomputer was a mess. Wires were unplugged, ripped out of their sockets, and strewn across the floor. The elevator had been sabotaged and was hanging useless between floors. Needless to say Dante and Riley were less then pleased with the destruction that greeted them.

Down in the scanner room Riley was hastily reattaching wires to the back of the scanners. Dante was in the control room underneath the supercomputer reconnecting more loose wires and plugs and cords. Both were unhappy about the state of the computer and scanners.

The connection to Lyoko had been severed—what Dante was quickly working to fix—and enough wires had been pulled to cripple supercomputer and scanner traffic and activity. While the damage wasn't sheer carnage it was quickly recognized for what it was a delay.

Riley and Dante were busy reconnecting the bare necessities needed to get people on and off of Lyoko all while under the steady tick of time. And they bore the mental stress that as they were floundering about XANA's attack was being carried out and gathering greater strength.

Feeling a sense of relief and a wave of urgency, Riley hastily plugged the last cord for the scanner and stood. He had been assigned to rewire and rehook up one scanner in order to save time and reduce the potential for mistakes to occur.

"The scanner's ready." Riley yelled to the ceiling knowing the intercom system would relay his message to Dante. "How much longer until the computer is ready?"

Up in the control room Dante eyed the last dozen or so cords dubiously as he reconnected, replugged, rebound, and unplugged mismatched cords. "Now." He called back. The middle scanner in the scanner room opened as if on cue, and Riley stepped inside.

"Ready on this end."

Up above Dante leapt over the mounds of disfigured and disorganized cords and made for the ladder rails in the elevator shaft the only connecting route left between the two floors.

In his mind he reached out into the supercomputer and began the virtualization process.

Scanner: Riley. Transfer: Riley. Virtualization.

Nimbly climbing down the rungs Dante briefly wondered about the current circumstances.

The damage done to the factory was deliberate meant to slow them down. But why? Yes, Dante and Riley had been slowed down considerably in the process of getting onto Lyoko. A good fifteen minutes had been needed to get the super computer function at the most basic levels of operation, but what was the point of it?

"_Hey, Dante."_ Crackled Riley's voice from Lyoko.

"Yeah." Dante replied as he entered the scanner room.

"_Any sign of Drew or the others? It's been a while since I called."_

Twenty minutes in fact, Dante mused. Sufficient time for Drew to make it to the factory not to mention Sakura or Hallie. "I'm sure he's fine." Or taking on XANA's attack head on. It wouldn't have surprised Dante if Drew had decided to take that course after all the hoopla he had made about the Truffels. But after all Drew could take care of himself.

"Anyway, although I was able to restore the connection to Lyoko I didn't have time to fully fix the scanners."

There was a pause, and Dante used it to enter the single working scanner. As the scanner hummed preparing to begin scanning Dante reflected. Yes, Lyoko and Earth were connected again, but given the time he had that was all he could do. He had almost no control over where the scanner would place him on Lyoko. The operative word being almost. Dante would appear on Lyoko right next to Riley, but other then that fixed unknown starting point he had no control.

He had not had time to locate the activated tower or to restore that program. He hadn't deemed the program a necessity. Once he was on Lyoko, Dante would know exactly where the active tower was, but the odds were he would be in a different region then the tower.

Dante blinked and dropped onto the firm desert platform. Looking over at Riley in his Jedi robes, Dante spoke simply. "We're going in blind."

Riley nodded his face a picture of calm. The only betraying fact of his unease was how his hand drifted towards the hilt of his light saber. "Right." He replied. "Where's the tower?"

Dante's red eyes were jerked east at a firm, incessant tugging in his mind. He could hear the inaudible pulsations from here, could feel the slight vibrations rumbling from so far away. "East, far east, near the way tower. And lucky us are on the outer desert rim, the furthest point from that tower in this region."

Riley nodded. "Do we have transport?"

Dante shook his head. "No time to restore that feature."

Riley nodded. He hadn't been that confident that the opposite would have been the case. Of course they wouldn't have transport. Why would the XANA and his saboteurs be so kind?

"So I guess we'll travel the old fashioned way, by foot. What do you think XANA's up to?" Riley asked. "Why all the delays?"

More faint pulsations reverberated in his ear. For a moment Dante was still tasting the air around him, searching for any malevolent presence or clue to their predicament. Finally he replied. "I don't know."

And without further ado he began running. The sooner the tower was deactivated the better. It was going to take a lengthy stretch of time and plenty of hard work before the factory was put to rights again.

The pair ran without pause over the barren desert landscape. Traveling from platform to platform Riley noted with great interest the complete lack of monsters. A curious coincidence. XANA had gone to all the trouble to slow down their progress by sabotage and dissembling the supercomputer and scanners, so why stop there? The whole situation reeked of a trap or an ambush.

Suddenly, Dante disappeared from sight. It took Riley a moment to realize the change in events. He had been running at Dante's heels for the entire stretch they had been running and now he was suddenly…gone. Poof, vanished into thin air. Before Riley could begin to speculate where Dante had disappeared to the missing man himself provided the answer by reaching out, grabbing Riley's arm, and successively wrenching Riley backwards mid stride.

Dante nearly lost a hand in the process. Riley's immediate reaction to suddenly being grabbed from behind was to activate his light saber and slash at the threat. A neat sidestep and loss of contact between the two avoided such damage but only just.

Finally having processed Dante had ceased running and had not disappeared, Riley deactivated his blade and asked with much annoyance—and quite rightly so—"What?"

In response Dante did not say a word. He merely motioned for silence and tilted his head to the side and listened to some far off sound only he could hear.

Finally he spoke. "Something's not right."

"Really? Was the lack of opponents your first or last clue?" Riley asked tartly. It was all a clever disguise though for the unease he really felt at such strange circumstances. Dante was right—as usual. Something was off about the entire situation.

Dante's head shot up to look to the digital sky. Riley's head followed suit. If Dante was looking to the skies as if expecting the heavens to open then something big was about to happen (whether for better or for worse was yet to be seen. Knowing Dante it could easily be either).

What Riley saw was a simple and common sight, but it surprised him all the same because he had not been expecting it. It was merely the scanner constructing the wire frame of one of the Lyoko Warriors.

Something eased inside of Riley's heart. Either one of his friends or his sister was safe. Secretly he hoped it was Sakura. He hadn't been able to contact her or reach her at all once the tower activated. But his heart sank slightly as the wire frame took on a distinctly masculine shape.

Soon Drew dropped to the desert floor. He looked just like his dad did on Lyoko excepting a few features. Instead of bearing the outrageous purple and gravity defying hair, Drew had an obnoxiously orange jumpsuit and short spiked hair. Instead of favoring the long range approach of his father, Drew's retractable Wolverine claws (so dubbed by the Sterns) left no option but close range combat. But aside from those key differences Drew really was his father's son. They both shared catlike features and outrageous color schemes.

But now Drew seemed more haunted then cocky or smug as he should rightly be after being proven correct above the majority. As he took in his surroundings and finally saw Riley and Dante, Riley could have sworn he saw fear flash through his friends hazel eyes.

The emotion was gone so quickly Riley almost doubted he had even seen it, for Drew carried on as if nothing was wrong. The orange oddball straightened, stiffened his spine and walked over to his friends. It was only when he reached them that Riley began to see the façade crack.

"The world's gone mad." Drew said simply. He began to speak before Riley or Dante had a chance to comment. "I tried, I swear I did. I tried to hold them off, but it's not like I can hurt them, I mean…" he exhaled. "XANA really got us this time."

"Drew," Riley said carefully. "What are you talking about?"

He wasn't listening, Riley noticed, because if Drew had been listening he would have answered the question. Instead Drew began talking again, to Dante this time. "I managed to lock them in a janitor's closet but it wouldn't have held them long not while they're together." Drew paused and laughed mirthlessly. "He really did get us this time."

"Drew." Riley said again. "XANA attacks. It's nothing new. We're on Lyoko. Whatever his attack is it can't reach us here. Only XANA's minions."

Drew laughed again. It was a mocking laugh and too bitter and old a laugh for a 17 year old to laugh.

"Really Riley?" he patronized. "Really? Because XANA is merciless. He strikes our hearts, finds our weaknesses, and exploits them. So Riley, what is your weakness? What renders you powerless? What do you hold dear and would hate to lose, hm?"

Riley's mind instantly leaped back to his thoughts from earlier. _Sakura._ She was still unaccounted for…what had XANA done?

Drew began to pace, circling the two as he continued his monologue. Dante's eyes tracked Drew's every move as Drew became increasingly more and more disturbing.

"What makes your heart scream in anguish and shudder in despair? Where are you most vulnerable because the two of them," slowly on the hand held loosely below his waist 18 inch claws silently crept out unnoticed to Riley, "aren't **here!**"

And Drew lunged a snarl on his face curling his lip as he made to strike down his friend. Red eyes flashed and an explosion of red light knocked Drew back and flipped him head over heels. Snarling Drew was on his feet and ready to pounce again when Riley shoved him back mentally with telekinesis. Dante lifted his hand and red energy sailed out of his fingertips and wove itself around Drew in a tight, crackling net preventing movement.

Drew stopped struggled and settled to stare murderously at Dante.

Riley, fingering the hilt of his light saber, found his voice. "That's not Drew."

"You're right." Dante replied and his eyes darkened. "She's not."

And with a flick of Dante's wrist all was revealed. Spiky blond hair darkened and grew pulling back into a ponytail and curling itself. The skin paled and the orange jumpsuit morphed into a robin's egg blue long sleeved shirt, slacks, and ballet flats. Finally hazel eyes darkened to a forest green, blurred, and then disappeared only to be replaced with a pulsing Eye of XANA.

"Impossible." Riley breathed.

Ignoring him, Dante looked at the revealed actress. "There has only been one shape shifter in the history of Lyoko Warriors that's been able to perfectly replicate the original image." Here his voice turned slightly accusing. "Isn't that right, Hallie?"

Aside from squirming further against her bounds, Hallie neither spoke nor replied. She only continued to hold Dante's gaze.

"Dante," Riley asked. "If she's not Drew then where is he? And where's." here he had to swallow and clear his throat in order to keep his voice from betraying him. "Where's Sakura?"

"Probably with Drew," Dante replied calmly, "trying to kill him."

Riley swallowed, hard. "So XANA has control of Hallie and Sakura?"

"It would appear so." Dante replied impassively. He was watching that pulsing Eye of XANA in Hallie's eyes as if it meant life or death. But where XANA was concerned it may mean just that. "We need to move. That won't hold her for long."

Riley nodded and focused firmly on the task ahead. He couldn't afford to dwell on the horror just revealed to him. No, he needed to focus. "How soon until we reach the tower?"

Shooting a backwards glance toward the pinkette, Dante muttered. "Not soon enough."

The two ran then faster then they had set out. It all became clear to Riley all his questions earlier. Why had there been no monsters? They weren't needed. Why was the computer sabotaged? So that they could see XANA's new power, being able to control one of their own. But now he could only wonder where his sister and best friend were, and if the situation was as dire as Dante had predicted.

_In the factory_

Drew whistled in shock. It was all he could manage in the way of sounds. Drew was never one to label his reactions to situations right off the bat—it never occurred to him—but this time he had a name for what he saw and how he felt, dumbstruck.

"This place is a mess." He muttered. As soon as the words left his mouth he recognized the sentence for what it was, the biggest understatement of the year. Crawling over a wasted support beam, Drew went over to the elevator and pressed the call button. At the lack of sound and rumble of the elevator Drew turned away. Of course having the elevator working would be too easy, like having the Truffels raising an army of zombie teenage girls would be too easy, too predictable. Instead he was forced to take the stairs and keep a weather eye out for his two hypnotized teammates.

Why, oh why hadn't XANA manipulated the masses? It would have been so much easier to deal with, so impersonal, and so simple instead of suffering various degrees of guilt in having to detain two good friends in a janitorial closet. Although, Drew mused, if XANA truly did have control over them a janitor's closet wouldn't hold them long.

Shaking aside unpleasant thoughts, Drew headed for the supercomputer gratefully that Dante had drilled into each and every one of their heads how to safely virtualize themselves and others onto Lyoko. It would make meeting up with Dante and Riley that much easier.

Spying a silhouette at the factory's entrance, Drew quickly climbed down the ladder rungs and out of sight. A new thought struck him as he descended. Because of Dante's drills, Sakura—the great destroyer of computers—would be able to safely virtualize herself onto Lyoko also. The thought made Drew climb faster.

_On Lyoko_

_"Dante? Dante?"_ a voice called over the intercom.

"Drew." Dante acknowledged. The two were hid among a forest of boulders grouped together and towering towards the desert sky. It was an interesting sight to see, a closed off Dante. The eighth wonder of the world. Well, it wasn't that extraordinary. Dante had been moody before, but there was something certainly frightening about a nonchalant Dante acting as if nothing was wrong when something clearly was.

Riley for some strange reason wasn't included in the conversation He could only hear Dante's replies after Drew's initial contact. And as such he had to get information secondhand.

"Is that Drew?" Riley asked.

"Really now." Dante said.

"Is he alright?"

"No, no. Stay."

"Where's Sakura?"

A sidelong glance from Dante. "No, it'll be fine. Nothing permanent."

"How?" words failed Riley. How could someone be ok if they were possessed by XANA?

"Don't worry, you'll have help." Another sidelong glance. And then Dante spoke in a lower tone of voice. "I'm perfectly aware of the fact."

Dante blinked and quit looking at the sky and instead started looking at Riley. Riley met him eye for eye, question for statement. They spoke simultaneously.

"What's going on?"

"You're going back to earth."

The two paused, and Riley processed the statement.

"You don't want any help then?" Riley asked. "on delaying Hallie?"

"Riley." Dante said simply, and somehow in that one word managed to convey how ridiculous Riley was being trying to stay on Lyoko when he was needed on earth; how absurd he was to underestimate Dante, and how silly he was to even begin to think he would be able to delay Hallie. Ah yes, how the monosyllabic could mock him.

"One hit Dante, and you're off." Riley warned. Ever since April Dante no longer held his banner of invincibility, and all of the gang knew it.

"Sakura needs you."

That was all it took, that one sentence. With that sentence Riley found it in himself to take the return to earth gracefully. He was needed. His _sister_ needed him. What kind of brother would he be if he abandoned her when she needed him?

"Alright," Riley nodded in assent. He caught the look of satisfaction that Dante showed in his eyes at Riley's announcement. "But where's Hallie? Shouldn't she have caught up by now?"

"She's already in front of us." And with that Riley felt the pull of the scanners as he was swiftly devirtualized and materialized back on earth and into the scanner. He opened his eyes just in time to see his sister and Drew duking it out.

Well, the duking itself out was one sided—thank goodness for Drew's sake. Sakura had clearly reverted to a more primal and feline nature and was trying to scratch Drew's face if not eyes out. Drew was holding her off by gripping her wrists and moving to and fro across the room caught in a dance of remaining unhurt and fending off his attacker without hurting her.

Riley noted with interest several red lines running down Drew's cheek, the split lip, and bloody nose. Well, a dried bloody nose, And by the way Drew was carrying himself it looked as if Sakura had managed to land some well placed hits to the chest and abdominal area.

All observations were cut short when Drew, having noticed the arrival of the cavalry of the one person who could do something about the situation, shouted. "Well, don't just stand there! She's _your_ sister. Help me!"

Obliging, Riley rushed over to join the madness. All in all he stood a better chance then Drew. For one Drew had to pull his punches completely or suffer the rath of the Stern family, and as Sakura's older brother, Riley had watched over, taken part in, and overseen the self defense lessons his parents had taught Sakura. And he was her brother, older, stronger, and could read his sister like a book. She was in short predictable.

Catching sight of the Eye of XANA flickering in her eye, Riley grew serious. Sakura was his sister after all. XANA had messed with the wrong family.

_On Lyoko_

All was silent in the desert sector. From the supercomputer map of the terrain there were only three important objects: the activated tower, and the two avatars facing off.

All was still in the desert sector. Not a monster of XANA could be found defending the tower. Not one guardian, crab, sicklet, hornet, block, kankerlot, peep, flying manta, or tarantula. The only defense against Dante was his own teammate, Hallie. XANA couldn't have picked a better guardian.

All were waiting on the desert sector. On earth the two siblings and best friend struggled. In Sector 5, XANA watched all with great interest. In front of the active tower 100 yards apart stood Dante and Hallie.

Nothing moved because Dante dared not move. The first step he had taken within 100 yards of Hallie had resulted in a pink energy sphere being hurled in his face. He had dodged it gracefully. It wasn't as if he wasn't used to having threatening balls of energy hurled at him. He had been Hallie's main sparring partner in the past. Only this time one hit would have him off of Lyoko and on earth unable to deactivate the tower.

No sound was heard because Dante was sizing up the situation, plotting, scheming, and devising a safe way to the tower without the death of an innocent on his hands.

And Dante had observed. He had discovered a very interesting thing. Whenever he took a step forward Hallie (under XANA's influence) would throw an energy sphere at him, but only if he was within 100 yards of her.

Dante raised his heel of the sandy ground. Pink energy began crackling around Hallie's right hand—her throwing hand. He placed his heel back in its former spot on the ground outside of 100 yards. The energy dissipated harmlessly.

Dante raised his heel and moved his foot forward as if to take a step. Pulsing XANA possessed eyes locked onto his foot, and Hallie's throwing arm shout out straight in front of her glittering with energy massing around her hand. Dante placed his foot safely back outside 100 yards. The arm was lowered, and the energy dissipated.

Dante took a step forward and hastily threw up a force field of red energy to block the volley of pink energy spheres. He took a step backward outside 100 yards. All fire ceased. This could turn into a game if he let it.

But enough about games.

100 yards.

So be it.

Dante raised his heel. Pink energy began to flare to life around Hallie's right hand. Dante extended his foot out hovering over the ground. Hallie's right arm raised. Dante spoke and took one step forward.

Nothing.

Dante smiled. Here he was on step inside Hallie's turf and still on Lyoko. Oh, the power of a name. Following up on the success of his first step, Dante repeated the single word from before.

"Hal."

And he took another step forward.

Again, nothing.

She was still there, poised to fire, standing impassive and emotionless except for one key feature, her eyes. The Eye of XANA had flickered at the sound of her name.

It was as Dante had surmised. He proceeded forward and slowly a step at a time all the while maintaining a steady dialogue.

"Well," Dante began as he took his third step inside of "enemy" territory. "I wonder how this happened. Your possession." He clarified.

95 yards.

"It's not often XANA takes control of his enemies. I can only think of two examples off the top of my head. Your mother and a cocky fellow named William."

90 yards.

"Neither of the possessions lasted too terribly long, and by too terribly long I'm using multiple years as my time frame."

85 yards. No movement. The only sign of life from Hallie's statuesque form was her ever flickering eyes holding either XANA's Eye or nothing at all (whiteness) for multiple seconds on end.

"But each of the possessions were set up and carefully done. XANA couldn't just take them over. Your mother had been given a necklace, a bug. William was taken over by the Schiphazoa. So what happened to you?"

75 yards.

"Well, obviously the attack has to do with the Truffels; but you don't own a Truffel, Hal. So how did XANA's attack lead to this?"

70 yards. It struck him at the 65 yard line right when the Eye of XANA began to solidify in Hallie's eyes.

"Sakura."

At the sound of her friend's name, the Eye disappeared leaving literally nothing in Hallie's eyes. No pupil, but no Eye. Dante was able to gain 10 more yards before he began to speak again.

"You and Sakura are joined at the hip. Best friends since diapers apparently. You've known each other since birth. Well." Dante paused to correct himself. "Almost since birth. Since six months of age most assuredly. You always support Sakura whenever she's facing off against Drew. You may not agree with her, but you support her. And since you have spent practically all your school time with her you've been exposed to whatever's caused this."

Another 10 yards gone.

"So whatever Sakura did that caused this hypnosis, you caught it secondhand." _Which was probably the whole point of the attack_, "but you aren't completely under XANA's control. Are you, Hal?"

There. A flicker of green. And only 30 more yards to go.

"Although the possession is thorough, it's shallow. It only grasps the surface. You're fighting in there, aren't you? Waging a war with an alien force, not letting it take you completely over. It's why you can only use your energy spheres. Anything else wouldn't be stable enough for such a conflicted mind to hold. The shape shifting I grant was thorough visually, but it didn't hide your Lyoko signature completely as it should if working properly. You thought I wouldn't notice. I had been wondering why the ground hadn't disappeared from beneath my feet, why I wasn't dust beneath a rock slide, or squished between two boulders. Yes, you are that vindictive when angry. But you aren't letting XANA win."

15 yards. Dante slowed his pace and ambled 10 yards over to Hallie before stopping 5 yards away from her.

"It fits with your character. Out of the entire time I've known you, I know you have three great wishes where Lyoko is concerned. You wish to deactivate towers and foil XANA's schemes. You have hunted the shcipozoa as part of your wish to find a way to…neuter it. And you have always longed to send me off of Lyoko courtesy of one of your energy attacks. That was the unstated motive behind Program Exorcism. You took away my invulnerability."

Dante chuckled and moved to stand next to Hallie so he could look her in the eye. "But even using Program Exorcism as the cheap shot it is, you've still lost. _And I win_."

Dante jumped away from the swinging first and indignant cry ("That's not true!"), and slid into the tower. The insides remained as usual. Data squares lining the walls, the pressure sensor activated lights and transport. And Dante mused as he deactivated the tower.

He thought of all the truffels he had taken apart, of the digital map, of Drew, Sakura, and Riley, and finally the feeling of sheer utter relief he had felt when he saw the Eye of XANA disappear to be replaced by indignant green seeking to repair her maligned character.

Dante chuckled. He had some apologizing to do when all this was over, but his ploy had worked. Hallie was back in her right mind. Now as the words Code Lyoko formed on the screen in front of him, Dante marveled. He still had the Code Lyoko code. But if he still had the one Hallie gave him then did she…? Dante filed the thought away for later. As the data banks fell away down the side of the tower he focused on the problem at hand. Solving the riddle of the attack. The who, what, when, where, why and how.

…

Surprisingly enough it was Drew who had the answers for the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the XANA attack. It was a simple matter to pull Hallie off of Lyoko and escort the befuddled but uncontrolled Sakura to a safer location. The girls were rather dazed and a dash disorientated after XANA's spell had lifted (they both couldn't remember how they had gotten to the factory or any on the earlier events); so it was up to Riley to go and retrieve the key to the entire situation, Chibi-chan.

"Apparently before the current generation of Truffels hit the market a prior model had been made." Drew explained to his audience—Sakura, Riley, Hallie, and even Dante spared him an ear as he disabled Chibi's inside. "The first generation was creepy and disturbing, so the first generation was dumped, the workers responsible fired, and the plans for the Truffels taken back to the drawing board. Now here's the interesting part. Chibi-chan is one of the few survivors of the first generation of truffels."

Drew smiled a smile that fully conveyed the six kinds of smug he was feeling. "And your precious Chibi-chan duped, hypnotized, and manipulated you into letting XANA have the opportunity to control you. And if that isn't evil then I don't know what evil is."

An eye roll and crossed arms fully conveyed Sakura's mood at Drew's words. Sheepishly embarrassed and desperately defensive. "Is there any truth in what the baka is saying, Dante?"

"Language," tutted Riley from beside his sister.

Pulling out a piece of software, Dante examined it carefully. Sure enough engraved in the surface was an unmistakable Eye of XANA. "Yep." Dante replied to Sakura. "That's the summary."

Sakura wilted into a slouch and glared at Drew who was fully enjoying his moment of triumph. Drew shot up with a shot of exultation. "Yes. I was right, and you." He sidled in front of Sakura, "owe me an apology."

The hostile look in her glare clearly communicated Sakura would not repay that debt.

"But how's it possible?" Hallie asked quietly. "I mean a plushy hypnotizing anyone let alone Sakura is a tad ludicrous."

"And I thought the Truffel software was insultingly amateur." Riley also said after he nudged his sister in the ribs.

"Not this software. This was designed to send out an electrical field that in the common tongue messes with the electrical field around the brain, and as Drew said hypnotizes the brain. Brainwashed is more accurate. The electrical field stimulates the field around and in the brain making the brain send out signals along the nervous system to do whatever the emitter wants."

"So Sakura had a special Truffel that took over her brain and made her more susceptible to XANA's influence." Hallie said slowly.

"And because Sakura and Hallie are joined at the hip, Hallie went down too." Drew finished. "Sorry Hal."

"So the point of the attack was to trash the factory and try to kill you guys?" Sakura asked.

"No," Dante replied. "It's not that simple. It was a power ploy to let us know how far XANA's influence can reach and take over the world or at least brainwash the masses. The second generation of Truffels broadcast whatever input they're given. Audio, the spoken word, programmed songs, or even the electrical field of from the first generation of Truffels. XANA could have used the popularity of the Truffels to enslave the minds of the masses. Fortunately for the masses, XANA was focused on Hallie and Sakura. Although if the tower had remained active I'm sure XANA would have secured control of Lyoko, the factory, and then moved on to take on the world."

A pause as all focused on a very certain reality.

"XANA's back," Dante concluded quietly. "And this is only the beginning."

Which would have been a very grim and solemn ending to any adventure if Hallie hadn't butted in.

"Well, I am personally disappointed. I expected more from XANA. XANA symbols printed on newspapers. Evil (here Drew's smirk widened considerably) balls of fluff zombifying the masses. Taking over the world. It all seems a bit cliché for the great and mighty XANA." A fierce glint of light entered her eyes then. "And you can tell XANA I said that."

The sound of clapping filled the room. "A point for spunk." Drew said as he continued to clap. "We shouldn't call you Hallie, Hal. We should call you Spunky. May XANA never make us bow to him in defeat."

"I second that." Sakura said as she pulled herself up off the floor. "Both of those statements. Come on, Spunky." She teased Hallie as she extended her a hand. Accepting the hand, Sakura pulled Hallie to her feet and turned to Riley to find him already standing.

"But Dante," Hallie asked. "If the Truffels are transmitters of some sort will they be a problem in the future?"

Closing up Chibi-chan, Dante packed up his tools. "No, they shouldn't. I must have dissected every Truffel on campus by now. After the modifications I've made the Truffels are not only hacker proof but also XANA proof."

"What about Nevermore?" Hallie asked.

"Who?" Drew asked.

"Oh yeah, Never, Raven's truffel." Sakura said thoughtfully as she meandered over to the stairs. "I think she burned it."

"Why?" Drew asked shocked.

Sakura shrugged. "She said having two Truffels in the same room was creeping her out, so she found an incinerator, and that was the end of Never."

Riley looked at Sakura then with a quizzical, I can't believe we're related, and you're strange look. "Your choice in roommates is weird."

"Hey, I didn't choose her!" Sakura defended. Her voice rose an octave. "We were assigned to share a room."

"Weird." Riley repeated, and then he scrambled up the ladder rungs to avoid the swipe Sakura took at him. Sakura followed up right on his heels going on about not picker her roommate, and Hallie, newly dubbed Spunky, followed behind pleading for the two to calm down. Soon it was just Drew and Dante.

Drew looked around the control room. It was still a mess. Not a lot of work cleanup wise had been done yet, so the room still looked as if a tornado had come through. During the ruckus Dante had walked over behind the supercomputer and had begun some of the repair work: beginning to securely reconnect the scanners and the computer.

Drew walked over and paused for a breath before speaking.

"It's going to take awhile to get this place back in shape, huh?" he asked as he took in the room again. The silence settled over the room for a handful of drawn out heartbeats before Dante replied.

"Yup."

"Need any help?"

"Nah," Dante replied as he reappeared from behind the supercomputer. "I'll recruit you guys later for work, but for now we need to back to campus and see if a return to the past is necessary."

Drew's ears perked up at this. "A trip back isn't necessary?"

"No," Dante replied. "Unless you want to relive the past month of your life."

"The last month?" Drew asked. "Repeat one month of choir madness, rehearsals, Truffel nonsense, and being thought insane and deranged at best? Heavens no! Once was quite enough!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Sticky note at the top of the page:** Well, I'm back. A few comments. If you want a longer Author's note read the sticky note at the bottom of the page. And please, have mercy on my poor, pathetic, stressed, overworked, underslept, nervous, and sensitive soul. Please don't review. My nerves, oh my nerves. On the plus side, this chapter visits the lighter side of lyoko reminscent of return my past for it's shorter chapters. And we finally have lyoko action. wahoo, semi action scens. we'll go into that next chapter. Please, don't review. Pretty please. Have mercy.

**Chapter 8:**

War, or something close enough to it played out in the depths of Lyoko. As usual XANA had struck again (a nasty affair, as per usual, somehow finding the means to control plastic resulting in the school's spork population leading the plastic upraising against the barbarians and infidels a.k.a. the humans) leaving the Lyoko Warriors to go and do what they did best. Thwart XANA and save the world, or in this case the school.

"Bombardment!"

"Riley, duck!"

Riley dutifully ducked, sheathed his lightsaber, and threw himself on the ground. Whenever Sakura was about to release a volley of weapons and issued appropriate war cries, Riley knew it would be wise to comply immediately with any warnings shouted his way. His wisdom was rewarded as a volley of glittering needles sank into the XANA's eye on the block in front of him. The block exploded accordingly. Riley flipped to his feet and cast his grey eyes over the artic landscape.

Streams of laser fire signaled the skirmishes being carried out on the ice caps of the ice sector. Up on the ice shelf above his head, Riley spied an orange sniper watching over the skies for hornets, and to his far left he saw his sister fully reveling in the role of body guard and agent of carnage. No block was safe from her. Riley was the scout going along and blazing the trail ahead; while Sakura trailed behind watching his back and protecting her charge, a fuming Hallie.

Riley wisely stayed away from his pink-haired friend and her volatile emotions. She had already collapsed an entire cliff of ice on top of what would have been a mob of kankerlots. The action had definitely been overkill, but Hallie was mad at practically every "overprotective" male friend of hers that knew about Lyoko i.e. all males on and operating the supercomputer.

"All clear ahead," Riley yelled as he swiftly dispatched a block. With a quick slash and a sharp mental shove, he sent another two off the snowy path into the sea.

"Finally." He heard Hallie mutter, and she practically flounced past him. Irritated pink energy sparked and popped in a halo around her head while she muttered, "Stupid probation and stupid overprotective, paranoid, babysitters." And with every word the pink light show brightened in intensity and became more erratic.

"We love you, Hallie," Drew called from above. "This hurts us more then it hurts you." The ledge Drew was standing on immediately crumbled underneath him. Yelping, Drew leaped for and latched onto higher ground. Below Hallie turned her nose up at him in scorn. Ah, to be an indignant female.

"Hallie, cut it out," boomed Dante's voice from above.

Hallie drew up short, spun on her heel, and positively glared at the sky. "I can take care of myself, so shove off." She looked strange glaring murderously into thin air.

Sakura tugged on Hallie's shoulder. "C'mon, we have a tower to deactivate."

Hallie stalked off leaving a trail of self-righteous indignation wafting after her. "He's lucky he's not on Lyoko. I'd fry him, flay him, and eviscerate him, alive."

"Now, now Hallie." Sakura laughed in a failed effort of consolation. "It's just for a month."

"One month is an eternity," Hallie protested.

Riley watched their conversation and body language—Sakura's hesitant, and Hallie's short, snappy, and abrupt—up to the point where Hallie faded through the walls of the tower.

Simply put, Hallie was on probation, banned from visiting Lyoko or the factoryon her own, and she wasn't happy about it. Riley understood and could see both sides of the issue. While Hallie was a superb fighter, especially now that she had recovered to almost full power, she had been caught alone on Lyoko, tricked and attacked by XANA, and hidden for two weeks undetected on Lyoko and thought dead by her friends and family. Dante had thought up the terms of the probation and had gone over Hallie's head to her parents to have them enforce the probation.

Hallie was livid, and Dante was wisely staying off of Lyoko when Hallie was on Lyoko. Sakura had signed up as Hallie's official placatory and escort, and Riley and Drew had volunteered to be the muscle. Dante was the overhead monitor and kept constant tabs of the supercomputer's virtualization logs and activity when Hallie was on Earth.

Riley mentally shoved another block off. As he watched the block plummet to the digital sea below, Riley waited for the deactivation of the tower. He didn't have long to wait before time flowed backwards and carried him along its waves.

And he found himself staring bleary eyed at his laptop. A quick glance at the digital clock secured the time, 1:30 am, and the guttural snores of Drew signaled that, yes, it was 1:30 in the morning, and what on earth was Riley thinking staying up into the wee hours of the morning on a school night? Riley closed his laptop and went to sleep.

…

The next day passed in the typical redundant blur of assignments, lectures, and the rest of the makings of a redundant day. But it seemed that Riley unconsciously didn't wish to repeat the day he had already lived. The morning passed in a stricken blur of panic starting when Riley slept through both his alarm, and all four of Drew's alarms (Which was an impressive feet being able to sleep through a foghorn, a chainsaw, a bomb raid siren, and the song that never ends). Finally, Drew kicked Riley awake just in time for the _Crap! I'm going to be late!_ mentality to set in. Drew swore he had never seen anyone get ready for school so quickly before (besides himself that is).

The moment Riley stepped out of the guys dormitory and out into the lobby of the student resident hall hoping nobody would notice how crumpled his shirt was and the fact that he'd worn these jeans yesterday, or thought he was experimenting with a new ruffled hair look, he came face to face with Hallie and Sakura. Their eyes widened comically, and they pounced unceremoniously on him and attacked his lack of hygiene.

One of them—he wasn't sure who—attacked his hair with a brush, and the other re-buttoned his mis-buttoned shirt. He fought, as all men do, against the indignity forced upon him, swatted at them, and then he noticed he was swatting thin air, and Drew joined the fray squirting him with way too much cologne, and finally the confusion died long enough to find the end of the madness symbolized in a tin foil wrapped breakfast taco held in Dante's hand.

And then Riley was alone with a breakfast taco, toothbrush, and a tube of toothpaste in his hand. The rest of the group had scattered to the winds anxious to reach their first hour classes. And then Riley struck out across campus for the library.

The unity and teamwork reborn in the morning was short lived. By lunch the group had divided into factions again.

Hallie was still _Grr, I hate you Dante!_

Sakura was still _Now Hallie, calm down. It's really not that bad. You guys are supposed to be friends... Please don't kill him?_

Drew was still amused about the situation and was thus earning Hallie's wrath also.

Dante still held his position of _It's for your own good. Grow up._

Well, that wasn't the exact dialogue, but that was the paraphrased gist of the undercurrents running around at the lunch table that Riley observed. Hallie wasn't really talking to anyone really, just glaring mainly. Riley wondered if his sister and Hallie had switched personalities. Usually Skaura possessed the volatile temper, and Hallie was the voice of reason but not today.

Clashes ended for the day once school let out. Riley found himself drifting into the student lobby on the bottom floor of the dorms. He set up camp sprawled on a couch with his laptop open, and alternatively stared at his computer screen and the other students in the room.

It was the typical after school scene. Clusters of students chatted and laughed and gave detailed accounts of the day. Some hunted down food, and others hunted down video games, and others still hunted down a quiet niche to study in. Hallie had cooled off into grudging resignation, and Sakura. Sakura was screaming bloody murder.

"NO!"

The 'no' was long, drawn out, horrified, agonized, and anguished. Much, Riley thought, like Obi-Wan Kenobi's when Darth Maul struck down Qui-Gon Jinn in _The Phantom Menace_ (as if that comparison wasn't geeky in the slightest). Riley looked up with caution. Usually when Sakura screamed someone had slighted her in some way, shape, or form, and she was shrieking her warrior cry before attacking. Riley quickly looked for any possible offenders. A brief yet thorough scan of the room reveled that no one was foolish enough to mess with his sister for whatever conceivable reason.

_Smart men_, he commended them silently and then turned to the situation at hand.

"Why?" Sakura sobbed to the heavens, and Riley reevaluated the situation. Sakura wasn't mad. She seemed sad.

"Sakura," he said evenly from across the lobby, "this had better be important for you to make such of a spectacle of yourself." i.e. this had better be important for me to help you with. Not the most gracious or brotherly thought, but it reflected Riley's mentality quite accurately.

"It's dead!" Sakura wailed. "My laptop died!"

_Of all the things to be screaming about…_Riley looked over at Sakura's laptop. Indeed the black screen did not look favorable for her laptop's health. "What did you do?" Riley asked simply. The unspoken words _this time_ lingered in the air between the two. Sakura was notorious for her poor computer skills. To a child raised with computers as her second best "friend" Sakura had a bad habit of exterminating any computer system and catalyzing many malfunctions and meltdowns beginning with the beguiling innocent navigation of her hand and click of the mouse.

"Nothing!" Sakura said defensively. "I was checking my email. I opened an email from you, and the screen went black." Her voice climbed an octave. "It can't die! I have a project due for comp sci in three days, and I only just figured out how to make the parameters work for my functions, and how to make the functions work. It can't die!"

"Did you save?" Riley asked. _Like every good, sensible, and paranoid child with your atrocious curse should?_

"No!" Sakura groaned and put her face in her hands. She wasn't crying. She was just very, _very_ miserable and frustrated, and those salty tracks of moisture were…sweat! Indeed, she was _sweating_ not, never, crying.

Riley frowned as a thought struck him. "I didn't email you," he said.

Sakura removed a hand from her face, and just looked at Riley. "If you didn't, then how did it end up in my inbox with your email address on it?"

"It's a computer virus. Records info, keystrokes, etc. Someone hacked your system." A new voice entered the conversation. Riley glanced over at the speaker. Dante had come to save the day.

Sakura sat up straighter. She clearly picked up on the heroic vibes emitting off of Dante if the relief in her voice and light in her yes were anything to go by. "Dante, my computer died." She swiftly transferred her laptop over to Dante. "Help me, please."

"Of course."

Riley returned to his computer and checked his email. Yep, he hadn't sent an email to Sakura lately. Why would he? If he needed to talk to her, she was just a text message and a five minute walk away. He clicked back over to his inbox. Maybe he'd better check again…

His mind drifted. Someone shaking his shoulder jerked Riley to awareness. He lashed out with is arm (the effect of being a Lyoko Warrior: you attack everything that startles you). His arm was caught, and Riley would have followed the countermeasure up with a fist if he hadn't recognized Drew's voice.

"Hey chill, dude. It's me."

Riley blinked and his awareness of his surroundings came back to him partially. He dropped his arm and muttered an apology.

"It's cool, but it's time to head up."

"What?"

"It's almost curfew. Look around. Everyone's gone up."

Indeed the lounge was dark and empty except for the artificial light from Riley's laptop screen. Riley rubbed his eyes. 10:30pm. It had been 5 the last time he'd checked the time.

"You ok?" Drew asked.

Riley closed his laptop screen. "Yeah," he said and began to pack away his stuff. "Just tired."

Drew trailed behind him to their room. "So what were you doing, homework? You were completely absorbed with your laptop all evening. You missed it. Dante worked his magic on Sakura's comp, and Sakura's sworn bloody vengeance on all hackers and viruses alive. Plus, some of the senior guys started a videogame tournament and got trounced by some freshmen girls. It was hilarious and totally humiliating. Remind me that if we ever hold any video game tournaments to have Dante on our team. So anyway, what were you doing? Were you playing games, looking up calculus pickup line t-shirts, or hacking out of the school's network?"

Drew's good natured ribbing slid right off Riley and did nothing to improve Riley's mood.

Unusually somber and vaguely recalling the background noise and victory cries, Riley could only reply honestly.

"I don't remember."

…

**Sticky Note at the bottom of the page 12-6-09:** Well, that took a long time to both write, type, edit, and finally publish. Three months. But hey I'm celebrating the end of football season, so an update! You know, it's quite pathetic when the first year anniversary of a story approaches and you're only on chapter 8. Well, RMH will definitely be a LOT shorter then RMP, no 80 chapters this time, but I may still end on an even numbered chapter, but that is a long way away from now.

I'm going to do something that I've never done before. I'm going to request that you don't review. I seriously don't mind. I haven't updated in three months. I'm really sheepish and am not expecting any happy or positive comments, and I don't want to entirely revamp this chapter like I did with chapter 6 with the Truffels. Did anyone catch the resemblance with Star Trek? The Trouble with Tribbles? The Trouble with Truffels? Anyone? Hello?


	9. Chapter 9

A/N 4-13-10: It's been a while. What can I say to defend myself? I feel guilty and irresponsible? That I experienced periods lacking motivation, writers block, and complete stress and mayhem? That I'm a senior in high school applying to, visiting, and choosing college while trying to get good grades? If you believe me I started this chapter back in December because I was so pumped with my update for HTBD and I wanted to update RMH so I could update HTBD sooner, but well, it is April now. Enjoy!

**Chapter 9:**

First thing the following morning Riley saw his sister, Sakura, hanging over Dante's shoulder demanding blood.

"Kill them! Track them down and kill!" she growled.

Drew appeared behind Riley. "She's demanding human sacrifices already?" he asked and shivered dramatically. "Remind me never to mess with her laptop."

Riley shrugged, and he watched the scene. Dante worked his magic restoring Sakura's laptop, and Sakura ranting. "She's a bit high strung."

"Of course, this is Sakura we're talking about," Drew agreed. "She's only rational when she has to be." A smile quirked across Drew's face as he thought about how little he saw the serious side of Sakura. If she wasn't baying for blood she was some other emotional extreme.

"Who does she want to kill?" Hallie asked, popping up between Drew and Riley, and barely containing her curiosity.

"Oh, so now you're talking to us," Drew quipped. If Hallie heard she didn't deem his question worth a response. She just kept watching with rapt fascination the scene playing out in front of her.

"I'm guessing the pathetic soul who sent her computer that virus." Riley said.

"Yeah," Hallie agreed, and she cocked her head to the side. "She was ranting into the night about what she'd do once she found the creep who almost killed her computer," she replied casually as if Sakura's loose temper was normal. Which when the group paused to ponder, it was.

"Any graphic R-rated descriptions?" Riley asked.

"No, actually," Hallie said with just a hint of surprise coupled with delight merging in her tone. "Just the regular venting."

"She's improving then," Drew remarked dryly. After all, how many times had Sakura blown up at him? Thousands, but he'd deserved it, mostly. He had a bad habit of stepping on toes when he chose to, and he decided to employ that gift and step on some toes, Hallie's toes. "Still mad at Dante?" he asked Hallie.

The quick narrowing of Hallie's eyes and swift change in disposition from rapt attention to dour pondering answered his question.

"Uh, duh," Hallie replied. "After what he did, of course I'm—,"

"Is what he did any different then what you did to him?" Drew cut in, subtly referencing Hallie's role in secretly implanting program exorcism into Dante's Lyoko form.

The utter look of disdain that Hallie threw at Drew would have terrified lesser men and wiser fools. Clearly the topic of conversation Drew was broaching was the highest of all faux pas and taboos in her world. Never suggest one of her past decisions was the wrong one. No one likes seeing the ugly sides of themselves after all, or being told they're wrong.

"Look Drew, there are no similarities between my and Dante's—,"

The fire alarm decided to go off then. For a moment all the students took a moment to just stare at the flashing lights on the ceiling visually alerting them to the fire alarm's activation. Then with a hesitant air, the student population began exiting the building like the well trained lemmings their teachers and supervisors had bred them to be all the while wondering whether their principal had turned unexpectedly cruel (well, with Principal Delmas you never could tell what her definition of cruel was precisely. The student body had learned to tolerate a lot of her more eccentric behavior. Fire drills before the first class of the day wouldn't be that out of place on the list of her quirks), some brilliant genius had pulled the alarm for jokes, or if it was an actual, bona fida fire.

The break in conversation seemed to be exactly what Hallie was looking for, an escape. "I'm going to class," she snapped slipping into the crowd of students leaving the building.

"But it hasn't even started yet!" Drew's voice carried over the curious chatter and speculative murmurs. "What are you even going to do?"

"Wait outside and study!" she shouted back, and by then any attempt to follow her proved futile as her pink mop vanished from the crowd.

Drew growled. "You'd think we'd get a break from odd behavior, or XANA's meddling," he grumbled as he shoved his way through the crowd of students.

"That wasn't XANA."

"Dante," Riley acknowledged.

Drew sighed (well not a sigh but a gusty releasing of air hemmed with exasperation and worked with frustration). "Then some brilliant genius pulled the alarm?" he voiced, and he glanced at the surrounding student body as if holding each and every one of them responsible for pulling the alarm.

"Indubitably," Dante replied.

All three sobered to a degree. There was a mixture of feelings pulsing amongst the three—admiration at the courage of the stunt, sheer wonderment at the utter lack of brains the inconsiderate dunce possessed for pulling such a stunt, annoyance at the dreaded lectures that would come from their principal, and then minor euphoria at the thought of sitting outside, basking in the sunlight, and not being in school while the whole mess got sorted out.

The student body spent an hour outside, an unproductive, idle hour for most. Many were content to recline in a field of clovers and laugh merrily as an unfortunate pair of senior girls seemed to find the mothership for all the school's nonvenomous spiders and shrieked accordingly. Sakura had melted, all stress washed away as, sunglasses on, she soaked up the sun. Riley had found a neighbor in the dorm with a soccer ball and was partaking in an impromptu scrimmage, and Drew was showing off his pigskin to Dante and all other curious onlookers. A game of catch had developed—a violent game involving keep away, running, tackling, huts, manly grunts, and battle cries.

But then of course all good things come to an end. Stress returned with the shouts of teachers beginning to herd the students indoors. A hideous and eardrum deafening lecture about respecting school property, yourself, and your peers followed, and all of the school skipped ahead to their second class of the day. Giddy about the strange occurrence, or at least one normal odd occurrence than usual, the students adapted to the new schedule and proceeded with their education.

And collectively throughout the building disbelief in its purest and most undiluted form arose with the third class of the day—coinciding with the first lunch of the day. Many students in the middle of a test pondered the inadequate content of information in their head, or the complete lack of content in the silent, stifling atmosphere of their classroom. Silence reigned, and all students knew the silence, a silence only marred by the scratch of pencils, the thuds of brain dead teens, and the silent taps of not so subtle cheaters.

And the fire alarm went off, again.

The thirty students in Hallie's history class jumped out of their skins at the sudden obnoxious wailing of the fire alarm. Some of the students cheered. Some of the students booed, and some of the students looked ready to leap out of their seats and strangle the fire alarm and the nitwit who caused it to go off again and caused their concentration to be utterly ruined.

The second retreat outside didn't hold as much joy as the first break, but there were always the cheery few who were happy to miss any chance of learning that ruined their groove. Other more crafty folk who'd been disturbed mid test were covertly comparing test versions and answers well out of earshot of their teachers.

"Who's the guy who spread the plague by hurling dead, plague infected bodies over the city's walls when he was attacking?" Sakura asked. She too shared Hallie's history class.

Hallie's brow furrowed. "That's not a question on the test."

Sakura shrugged. "I know. I was just thinking about one of our old lectures."

"Genghis Khan."

"Ah, so what do you think about the fire drill then?"

"Stupid," Hallie muttered. "I still have adrenaline shooting through my veins. I jumped like a foot in the air when that stupid alarm went off."

"Which for you is saying something," Sakura said. Hallie shrugged dismissively. "Hey," Sakura said, and she gently placed her hand on Hallie's shoulder. "How're you going?"

Hallie grimaced and pulled a garish face reminiscent of the time she'd eaten a lemon whole. "Fine," she muttered, and she shrugged off Sakura's hand.

"Still mad?" a grunt accompanied with an eye roll answered Sakura. "Yeah," Sakura echoed, "that was a stupid question."

"He just makes me so mad!" Hallie said suddenly, and she swung around coming face to face with Sakura. Flinching, Sakura took an involuntary step backward at the sudden swing in her friend's behavior. The look of heat and pure loathing on Hallie's face was almost frightening.

"He had no right! He _has_ no right to keep me from Lyoko. And just because I "forced" my program on him for his own good back in April does not mean I shouldn't be grouching. There is no comparison.

"Because of Dante those stupid scanners won't scan me because some stupid computer has been given orders no to scan me in when I'm alone, and I can't find any stupid loopholes in that ridiculously, asinine, vituperative program he conceived—,"

"Hal," Sakura started, concern lacing her voice.

"—and put up to keep me off Lyoko, and I can't get on—,"

"Hal," Sakura said, fear creeping in alongside the concern.

"—and I have to, but I can't because of him—,"

"Hallie,"

"—and he's so infuriating because I have to get on—"

"Hallie!"

"because it hurts!," Hallie finished matching Sakura's desperate, frantic vocal force. "I can't get on Lyoko, and it's physically hurting me. I'm feeling real pain—that's why I'm so grouchy and random today—and I have to get on but I can't, and I have too." Her voice cracked finally under the tide of repressed emotion spilling out. "Sakura, I have to get to Lyoko. I don't know why, but all I know is something is calling me there, and not going hurts."

A single tear streaked down her cheek. "I hate Dantes right now. I don't want to hate him, but I do, and I hate the way I'm feeling, and I don't understand what's going on, and I hate that." A shaky laugh fell from her lips as if Hallie had realized the verbal emotional ramble that had spilled out quite unintentionally from her lips. "I'm way messed up, aren't I?"

Sakura looped an arm around Hallie's shoulders and just hugger her friend, and for a moment the world around them ceased just long enough for comfort to be offered and accepted. Then Sakura's soft voice broke the spell.

"Maybe," Sakura hesitantly started. "We should talk to Dante."

Hallie roughly pulled away and shook her head. "No. I don't want to talk to him."

"Hallie," Sakura entreated, "he can help."

"No, he started this mess, and he'd only try to stop me." Hallie said. For a moment Sakura considered going behind Hallie's back, but Hallie's stubborn face morphed into a more hesitant look. "Sakura, sis, I have a favor to ask."

"Ok," Sakura warily replied as she eyed Hallie trying to decipher the new mood. "What is it?"

"Don't stop me." Hallie said, and she gazed at the tree line across campus and over the hundreds of kids shouting and groaning and laughing. "When I make my move, please, don't stop me."

Sakura opened her mouth to reply, but never did. The teachers appeared looking irate and grumpy, and the Principal made an appearance with a look of utter distaste engraved onto her face and a megaphone in her hand.

"Alright, back to class. If you were eating lunch, return to the cafeteria. Let's move people. If anyone is caught in the halls without their teacher's permission, you will receive a week of detention. Back—,"

The fire alarm went off again. Principal Delmas's megaphone fell from her mouth in shock, and her other hand flew to a radio receiver in her ear. Even though the megaphone was away from her mouth, the megaphone was still on and thus caught and projected Principal Delmas's words for all to hear.

"What do you mean technical difficulties? I have on good authority that our system will by no means malfunction. Yes, I can hear it. Ooh…" she yanked the megaphone back to her mouth and growled with repressed fury. "Dante Millard report to my office. Day students gather in the courtyard by the gates. All boarding students are to return to their dorms. Teachers this is the Alpha lockdown, I repeat, this is an Alpha Lockdown."

Sakura glanced over at Hallie as Principal Delmas pointed her megaphone and began yelling at a pair of particularly sluggish students dallying behind the moving crowd, and she raised her eyebrows, a clear question. Hallie raised her hands defensively as she turned toward the dorms.

"I've done nothing,' she said, and she glanced over her shoulder at Sakura, "and you can't prove it."

"What makes you think I'm accusing you of doing anything?" Sakura asked, and the two left for the dorms.

…

Out of all the kids that had cowered and cringed in anticipation of the inevitable doom looming before them, Dante was the bravest as he stared down Principal Delmas. He was also one of the few fearless, the small group of students who weren't called to the principal's office for doing something wrong, but for doing something right. The Principal's office and the surrounding offices were hives of activity as the Principal and her staff dealt with all the technicalities of the fire alarm repeatedly going off.

"Oh, cut the attitude Mr. Millard," Principal Delmas scolded. "You know you're not in trouble. I just need you to run through the coding for the fire alarm and check for bugs."

Dante nodded. "What about hackers disrupting the system?" he asked casually as he slid into a chair in front of a computer screen. Behind him an authority figure, male cleared his throat. Dante's eyes casually flicked between the two as the power struggle started and the computer screen in front of him.

"Principal Delmas, a student should not have access—,"

"Mr. Millard's a computer genius Mr. Hackney," Principal Delmas interjected. "And I'd rather have him here where I can monitor him and have him look after the programs."

"And you'll let him into the system?"

Dante smirked at Principal Delmas's world weary response. "If he had wanted to topple the system, he would have done so a long time ago."

Which was very true, Dante reflected as he began tracking down the online rabble-rouser. He was probably one of the few that could bring the school's server seamlessly crashing down between the school's unsuspecting ears without a trace leading back to him.

"We've disconnected the power from the fire alarm systems," squawked an assistant principal to the general vicinity.

"None of the security cameras have found any evidence of the fire alarm being pulled," shouted another AP.

"Great, we have a ghost on our hands," Principal Delmas muttered under her breathe. "Millard, give me good news."

"I've blocked access to the school computer network and primary functions such as water, AC, the phone lines, and—," The room plunged into darkness and every computer screen flickered off simultaneously, "—the electricity," Dante finished fingers belatedly hitting the enter key, and he tapped the keyboard experimentally trying to coax some life out of the electronic device. No response or sign of life. "Power's gone, all across campus."

Only the light filtering from the windows behind the Principal's desk illuminated the room. Principal Delmas groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose in a vain effort to fight off her migraine.

"Principal Delmas," an adult's voice said in what Dante could almost classify as a definite whine.

"Millard, out!" Principal Delmas snapped.

"Yes ma'am," he replied and made his escape out of the warzone. It didn't matter that the power was gone (well, maybe a little). The important thing was he had managed to track the hacker back to their home terminal.

Back to the factory and Lyoko.

…

Hating the genius architects who designed the dorm hallway in the girl's dorm without windows was an easy task for Sakura. One minute she'd been lounging in her room catching up on homework, and the next the power was gone. Now her poor toes were screaming bloody murder at Sakura. Apparently digging around her dorm in the dark for a flashlight can be a particularly painful process. What had possessed Raven to keep barbells in their room?

"Hey Hallie," Sakura called as she knocked on her friend's door. "Never fear, flashlight girl is here to illuminate your world. Hallie?" Trying the door Sakura gasped in surprise when the door opened without any resistance.

"Oh, Hallie," Sakura sighed in dismay as her lone flashlight beam revealed the empty room. Closing the door Sakura pulled out her cell phone and dialed a very familiar number.

Sitting in a scanner her casual posture giving off an air of lazy indolence, Hallie waited patiently for Dante's appearance. Slipping out of the dorm had been easy in the confusion following the loss of power, and the decision to go to the factory had been an obvious choice. As an experienced Lyoko Warrior, Hallie could read and interpret the Signs well. Weird fire alarm happens, loss of power, missing school, and an unreasonable urge to go to Lyoko all led to one conclusion: something was going down on Lyoko.

Usually Hallie would be on Lyoko raring to go and getting down to business, but stupid Dante and his stupid program had her trapped on earth powerless. So she waited, patience perforced.

When Dante appeared out of the elevator, she clucked her tongue in disapproval and leaned forward.

"Now Dante, don't tell me you're going on Lyoko all alone," she simpered, patronization dripping from her tone. "That's against the rules."

"You're not going," Dante said firmly as he strode across the room to a scanner to Hallie's right. Cue eye roll.

"You can't go on by yourself," she mimicked switching her tone from dripping poison to the voice of reason. "You're not all powerful anymore."

"And neither are you." Dante easily replied. The scanner doors slid shut.

"Yeah, but together we're a team, a formidable pair, nigh unstoppable," her voice filtered through into Dante's scanner.

In her scanner Hallie bit her lip wondering the outcome and uneasily coiled into a tighter ball hugging her knees. She hadn't been lying to Sakura. She did hurt, and as she heard the scanner next to her begin to hum she muffled a strangled cry and savagely banged her head against the side of the scanner in frustration.

Mission failed. Dante wouldn't take her onto Lyoko. She'd have to get on some other impossible way.

But then the scanner doors in front of her slid shut, and humming indicating the scanner booting up immediately boosted Hallie's spirits. On Lyoko she dropped to the ground gracefully and looked at her surroundings gleefully before she proceeded to hug Dante happily.

"Thank you," she whispered before disengaging and smiling at Dante for the first time since she'd been "grounded". She examined herself from tip to toe, from her robin's egg blue ballet slippers led to gossamer blue pants and a matching long sleeve shirt. She touched the tips of her long elfin ears and shook her head feeling her curly ponytail wag back and forth.

It was so good to be back. An instant calm had fallen over her when she'd touched down on Lyoko. It was so natural being here, being in this form. Sometimes, she never wanted to leave this place. She wanted to stay here forever.

_Wait. What?_ Where had that come from?

"Ok," Hallie said. "We need to go—,"

"This way," Dante and Hallie said together both pointing in opposite directions.

"No," Hallie said, a slight frown forming on her elfish face. "It isn't." Her voice trailed off, and she turned her head toward the center of Lyoko. "There's something…coming."

Unwittingly she turned and took a step toward the center of Lyoko. Dante followed her gaze, and together they felt the ground shudder and saw the shockwave. Off on the horizon a star shone in the dark sky of the ice sector. It shone and enlarged, a shooting star streaking low on the horizon straight toward

"Hal, get down!" Dante shouted as with one hand he pushed Hallie behind an him and with another cast out a flood of red energy into the form of a barrier surrounding both him and Hallie.

The shrapnel came first, forerunners for the storm at its heels. Chunks of ice bombarded the shield driven by a strong wind which tore through the sky and across the land blowing with a ghastly wail.

The bright star once shining in the sky joined the blizzard's swirling intensity and yet did what the blizzard did not, triumphed where the blizzard failed. The white light shot straight through Dante's strongest barrier, straight inside of Hallie, a shot sent straight to her heart.

Hallie gasped, and her eyes burned white as a luminous glow surrounded her body, and she shone like the star had in the night sky, like a star in the universe as her blue attire slowly turned white.

"Help us," she said.

...

Dante wasn't sure how long the snow storm raged outside his barrier. All he knew was that the blizzard wailed on, a continuous background roar, while he talked face to face with a possessed Hallie.

"You're out of line," he blandly told the Heart of Lyoko. Hallie smiled, an eerie sight with her glowing pupil-less eyes and the white energy aura surrounding her.

"That's beside the point."

"She's not supposed to know you even exist," Dante countered, a bit of his hidden ire revealed. _She_ in particular wasn't a hard identity to decipher. _She_ was Hallie, and Hallie's conscious self wasn't in control of her body. Some would have considered it odd that everyone in the current group of Lyoko warriors knew of the Heart's existence and the Heart's phenomenal physical resemblance to Hallie except Hallie. For her the Heart was a voice in the center of Lyoko that only she seemed to hear and nothing more.

"Again," the Hallie replied, "that's beside the point."

"What's the point then?" Dante asked. "Why did you decide to meddle with Kaddic's electrical system and trip the fire alarms repeatedly?"

"XANA's attacking," the Heart said simply, and Hallie's luminous eyes bore into Dante's. "And you can no longer tell."

"XANA's been attacking for two days. He's hypnotized your friend, Riley, through a computer program "accidentally" piggybacked in on his computer and downloaded, and the virus is spreading through emails from computer to computer. At any second Riley and countless others could go berserk."

But that was only the first line of attack and the least obvious, the more subtle attack. The other more obvious attack was the attack causing the blizzard warring around them, and the Heart's flight for refuge inside of Hallie. A mental stretch to touch the link between Dante and XANA left Dante standing in front of a mental Berlin Wall cutting him off from XANA. Normally, such a discovery would have pleased him, for XANA's meddling influence had darkened his life in the past year. But now the wall solidified the Heart's claim. Dante's contact with XANA had been cut off including the link that alerted him to active towers. Dante opened his eyes, his black eyes.

"What's the damage?" he asked as levelly as possible.

"XANA had the wall crawlers attack me. I waited for you, for any of you to appear, but none of you did, so I started reaching out and calling for you, specifically Hallie. When I made contact with her Lyoko automatically went wild: blizzards in the Ice Sector, sandstorms in the Desert Sector, and avalanches in the Mountain Sector. The trees became animated in the forest Sector, and there are tsunamis' in the Digital Sea, and quakes in Sector 5.

"The upheaval gave me enough of an edge and cover to place some temporary shields around the core of Lyoko before I left. Then I whipped up some chaos at school to get someone's attention on earth, and for Hallie to slip away."

"You can't stay," Dante said, and white eyes blinked at him.

"I know. They're other things I must do," The Heart's voice faded and sounded remorseful. "And don't worry. She won't remember my presence. Even the pain she felt on Earth when I called her will fade from her memory."

Dante shook his head. No use dwelling on the past. "Why does it always have to be Hallie?" he mused aloud.

A smile spread across Hallie's face as the white glow slowly began to fade as the Heart prepared to leave her host. "It's not about Hallie. It has always been and always will be about you." Before Dante could question her further, the heart breezily pushed ahead. "I require your services in Sector 5. Just you," she added. "Hallie needs to shut down the active tower."

Dante quirked an eyebrow. "By herself?" he challenged. Cue sigh and eye roll.

"She's never been safer. All of Lyoko has fallen into a state of hyperawareness in order to fend off XANA. But since I knew you'd ask," The Heart waved her hand, and the storm abated around their shield. Through the dying wind and Dante's red energy shield he could make out an orange-garbed, cat-tailed Lyoko Warrior.

"Drew will escort Hallie," the Heart concluded. "But Dante, keep this in mind. This matter of grounding must be resolved quickly or Hallie's irritation towards those who "hinder" her will cause Lyoko to lash out at her wardens."

And the light coiling around Hallie rose up and into the air. Hovering, the light reformed to show a figure made of light. Dante let the red shield around them fade only when he had verified Drew's presence and saw the dazed look in Hallie's now green eyes begin to clear.

"Let's go," he murmured to the Heart, and the two left before Hallie fully came back to her senses.

…

Red light faded. The inner bright, shining light withdrew, and Hallie's mind ached in response the hasty removal. The ground and sky faltered spinning on its axis, and for a moment all Hallie seemed to see were stars, but when she stumbled forward a strong arm and a familiar presence steadied her.

"Whoa there, Hal," Drew said as he grabbed the swaying girl's elbows. "Did you nip too much at the sugar?"

"No," she mumbled thickly, and she came enough to herself to steady herself without Drew's hold. "What are you doing here?" she asked bemusedly.

"Well," Drew's voice snapped her back to attention. "My roommate's acting strange, plus the school's technical and electrical malfunctions, and a phone call from Sakura pretty much spelled out XANA attack to me. So, as always, when danger calls I come running." He smiled an affable smile that melted the hearts of the female student body on campus, and charmed a smile out of everyone else. "Although, I must ask, what's up with the weather?"

Around the wind still howled its offense, a high-pitched wail cold enough to chill all the nerves in the spine. But strangely no angry gusts tore through Drew or Hallie. Instead the wind blew gently caressing the air that surrounded them, but neither snow nor sleet nor hail nor breeze disturbed them.

"Lyoko's angry." Hallie said.

A crack of thunder rattled the sky, and freezing rain began to pour. Nervously, Drew unsheathed his claws and eyed their surroundings warily as the rain and sleet obscured all visibility. Inside their calm bubble Hallie turned and strode towards the southern part of the sector.

"The tower's this way," she called back to Drew.

Drew hesitated a moment, and a smack on the crown of his head from a piece of hail sent him leaping after Hallie.

…

The trip to Sector 5 went smoothly, or as smoothly as such chaotic conditions would allow such a transfer. Sheer turmoil rocked the blue sphere. Blue squares used as the external covering for the sphere whirled around in the empty air chasing down flying mantas and flowing in a steady stream from the surface of the sphere to the core chamber.

"This way," called the Heart as she materialized into a wispier, transparent form in front of Dante. "I'm trying to use Lyoko to the best of my ability, but the crawlers are still—," she gasped, suddenly cut off and flickered dangerously between a stable(ish) version of Hallie to an explosion of pixels. Shuddering, her form lost its shape before resolidifing.

The air was torn with a scream as Lyoko resonated and carried the echo of another pink haired girl's scream from the Ice Sector to Sector 5. Cracks began breaking across the surface of the sphere.

"They got through the shields," gasped the Heart. "Dante—," she started futilely and flickered out of sight into a cluster of white light which zoomed toward the core chamber. Jumping onto his newly materialized hover board Dante zoomed toward the core.

On the Ice Sector Hallie was doubled over with a hand clutching her heart in pure soundless shock at the knifing pain which had torn through her chest moments ago. Drew hovered at her side, a fountain of words, exclamation, and worry as she remained frozen in all but thought. The storm around them fizzled for a moment, halting, and then roared back to life with a stronger and more ferocious fury then before.

Eyes sightless to the scene in front of her, Hallie missed Drew's quick spin on his heel and deployment of an airborne projectile out into the storm. She missed the eye of the storm collapsing around them and the frozen rain and sleet pounding into the air dividing her from Drew, and she missed Drew's return bent over against the wind and looping his hand in hers. And she let herself be led because for the moment her eyes saw images and scenes not present in front of her, but from a place farther away. She saw through a memory and the connection the call had traveled through.

Crawlers surrounded her, torturing the air with their battle cries. She was hovering in midair above a long drop, and she heard a great, repetitious, grinding sound of a multi-hinged door opening and closing far below her. Red light and explosions lit up the air around her, burning her ears as she tried and failed to safely absorb and process the signs of a warzone.

Where was she?

And then Hallie saw a very strange sight as she hovered in the middle of the battlefield. She saw herself clothed in white hovering in front of her.

"You shouldn't be here," Hallie heard.

This was so familiar, Hallie thought, so much like the time where she had fallen into the digital sea. Her reflection, her white clothed twin had been there that time too.

"You need to go back."

Confusion, a sense of hesitance and lingering doubts.

Her twin's voice turned sharp. "Hallie, if you don't go back, you'll be bound here again, forever. I'm already starting to sound more like you. Go, Go!"

_But something's wrong_, Hallie though, and she reached out to the image and beckoned it closer. _What's wrong?_

A sharp slap to the face snapped her back to the Ice Sector. For a moment, all Hallie could see was swirling white, but tell tale orange bled through. For the first time Hallie felt a split between two places, and a sense of incompleteness and emptiness that hadn't been there before. Even now consciously back in the Ice Sector she still felt that tug that would take her back to Sector 5 in spirit if she so chose.

Even now without choosing to see the blue sector, if she peered at Drew just right, stared him straight in the face, peripherally she could see the exchange of red laser fire, even as she focused on Drew's orange jumpsuit and shaggy blonde hair.

"Hallie, come in Hallie," she heard, and she snapped back to the Ice Sector marveling at the sudden change of scenery. "Right," she said collecting her thoughts, "tower ahead," she paused for a moment to double check the tug in her mind indicating the possession of the tower. "100 yards."

And the hail pelted the raging winds and snow, and somehow Hallie managed to keep her attention from straying to Sector 5. 15 yards away from the tower Hallie and Drew had been forced to turn and fight simply because of the sheer numbers of kankerlots seriously swarming the tower. XANA's security had decided to show up, kankerlots all huddled together to shield themselves from the frozen projectiles swirling through the air.

Hallie had taken up bowling energy spheres through the kankerlot ranks in order to create a dent in their ranks. But then for a heartbeat while energy still crackled in her hands, Hallie was back in Sector 5 watching the mini-war playing out.

Red lightning bolts writhed across the ceiling striking with deadly precision. Another endless swarm of XANA's monsters had been spawned and appeared in force, and she saw what had torn her here. Hallie saw it mimicked in both the Ice Sector and Sector 5.

One stray shot from the barrage was heading right for her. One shot and she would be gone.

Panic flashed and instinctive self defense kicked into gear. With barely a thought Hallie threw up a shield, a beautiful white and pink streaked shield of energy surrounding her entirely in a wonderful sphere.

Fury passed through her as she saw Drew's Lyoko form burst into an explosion of pixels. This was ridiculous. Pink energy crackled and the ice shelves shuddered. She did not have to stand for this nonsense.

And Hallie created a solid marble burning with pink energy. Bowling her last ball, Hallie spun on her heel and entered the tower. She didn't stay to see the flash of pink energy flashing decimating the ranks of the kankerlots and staining the dark, winter sky.

She rose up to the upper platform, entered the expected code and prayed to the heavens that her world would return to normal, to a world her every step wasn't monitored, and she wasn't banned from Lyoko. A world where storms didn't rage on Lyoko, and a world where she didn't see double.

…

Down in Sector 5 a heart and an heir sat side by side staring at the core of Lyoko. The sphere spun slowly on its axis surrounded by a shield shimmering with white and pink energy streaks.

"Tower's deactivated," the Heart said candidly as she swung her legs over the edge of the ledge, and she peered down the open space to the spiraling staircase of blocks below.

"I couldn't tell," Dante replied, and he meant it.

"I hope you get the tower scanner up and working again. I can't disrupt your school's regular class operations every time XANA attacks."

"You won't have to," Dante said. "Although, you seem far more lucid then usual, almost human."

The heart shrugged. "Like you're one to talk. Hallie and I have always been connected, so I've always felt strongly for who and what she care for, but after the spring, we both left impressions on each other."

Dante barely managed a nod as his mind strayed back to the incident in April, where the Heart had reached out and sheltered Hallie after her disastrous drop into the Digital Sea. He shook his head, mentally banishing the thought, and he turned to other sobering and dismal thoughts such as his "father's" recent attacks.

First XANA sent out an attack where he ended up brainwashing Sakura and Hallie in the latest teen fad, the Truffel (still a hot novelty item in the teen world), and now acting off lately. But Dante had never dreamed XANA could be involved without an activating a tower. Well, maybe his paranoiac and pessimistic side had dared to dream. Hallie, Sakura, Riley had been hit. The only ones left unscathed were himself and Drew so far.

So far.

Computer viruses and email. Hadn't Sakura said Riley had sent her an email before her computer crashed? And hadn't Riley said he'd not sent her the email? All that meant was XANA had hacked Riley's computer and tried to spread the virus to their email list.

First Hallie and Sakura, then Riley.

"He's going to go after Drew next, then me," he said aloud.

The pinkette beside him seemed unmoved by his statement. She continued listlessly swinging her legs and peering over the ledge in front of her. "Maybe," she finally said.

"Maybe?" he repeated.

"Oh, without a doubt, XANA's going after Drew next, but here's one thing I've noticed. XANA attacks the heart because he knows when the heart dies everything else soon follows.

Dante shook his head. "I didn't take you for an egotistic."

The heart shook her head, letting the pink curls bounce vividly from side to side. "I said it before Dantes. It's not me he wants. It's you."

The return to the past function dragged Dante roughly from his perch back across the waves of time, two nights before Kaddic's world turned upside down, and he reflected over his growing suspicions and over the dark seeds planted in now three of his friends' minds. And finally he had to admit, he'd hoped what he heard on Lyoko certainly wasn't the case.

Dante wasn't quite sure what he would do if it turned out he was the source of his friends' troubles.


	10. Malfunction, the Beginning

**A/N 6-7-10: In honor of my graduation and in memory of the good, old, early days in RMP where my chapters where a page and a half, I give you a two and a half pages. Enjoy.**

**Chapter 10**

Now computers had never been Sakura's strong suit. In fact Sakura's unfortunate interaction with computers had left her with the impression that computers willfully hated her and forcibly shut down just to escape her presence. No matter what care she took, what firewall, or what security programs she installed, Sakura had crashed more computers in the span of her high school career then the entire student body combined (at least in her opinion). And when the computer didn't spontaneously shutdown other computer ills were drawn to her like magnets: power outage, loss of wifi, cookies, Trojan horses, various viruses, corrupted or lost files, freezing, a dead mouse, or a keyboard that would only type the letter "A".

Computer class and its projects were thus herculean challenges viewed with much trepidation, but thankfully even though computers and Sakura had issues, the computers didn't always pitch fits whenever Sakura got on (or else she'd get nothing done), and not all computers hated her. The computers only seemed to act up whenever it was least convenient to Sakura, such as when she had a computer science class project due in three days, and her ALICE software decided to pitch a fit, again. By now Sakura had learned to compose herself whenever computers became belligerent, so now as she stared at her dearly beloved laptop screen at 11:45pm on a Monday evening she just sighed only slightly miserable as the search engine told her once again that no program called ALICE was on her laptop.

Meaning, she surmised as she switched her gaze to her ceiling, that the virus that had killed her laptop had also dragged ALICE down with it. _At least_, she thought as she shut down her laptop and turned in for the night, _I had the sense to save my project on a flash drive._ And so far flash drives had yet to fail her.

2:30am

Sakura shot awake and hit her palm against her forehead. "Duh," she said to herself. "Idiot!"

Humming with her epiphany, she scrambled as quietly around her dorm room as possible grabbing shoes, keys, phone, a jacket, a flashlight, and her flash drive and went to visit the one computer that didn't hate her.

…

For the following two days Sakura slaved over her computer science project finalizing the timing, tweaking the functions and parameters until finally on the due date she was six kinds of smug and practical purring with how well her project had turned out. Simply put, her project was awesome, and she was expecting a standing ovation when her

"I will admit," she began, "I was daunted at first."

Drew smiled, nodded, and did what most guys did when girls began to prattle on about trivial things: tune out on the conversation while giving appropriate monosyllabic affirmations of listening.

"Yeah."

"I mean my laptop died, no thanks to XANA, and my computer lost its ALICE software despite Dante'sbesteffortto restoremylaptop toitsformercondition, andhedidrestoreit tooitsalmost formercondition..."

"Uh-huh."

"AndIwassodesperateandsoheartbroken andsooverwhelmedandstressed becausehowwasI goingtowork onthisproject whichislike amajorgrade withoutacomputer withsoftware, andallcomputers exceptmylaptopand labcomputershateme, so,like, Iwasfreakingout, and then it hit me."

"Great."

"Ihadanepiphany, likealightbulblitup. Idiscoveredgravity likeThomasJefferson. Wait, no, that was the telephoneandthelightbulb, so I wenttotheonecomputer which doesn'thatemewith myhandydandy flashdrive."

"Brilliant," Drew muttered and frowned at the worksheet in front of him. _Think eyeball and light reflecting off a lens. Or is it refracting?_

"Butmyflashdrivefailedme. Well, sortof, itdidn'tcompletelyfailme, but I had toimproviseand downloadnewavatars tosubstituteforthe onesthatdidn't saveinmybackup, so I did, and Ichanged all the commandsto accommodate thenewavatars, andyou'vegottaseemyproject. It's so cool. Drew?"

"Yes," asked Drew, and he snapped to attention. After a quick examination of her (earnest) face, he settled for a neutral one liner that could apply to anything within two seconds. "Sounds awesome. Can't wait. What did you get for question 5?"

The rest of fourth period passed uneventfully for Sakura and Drew. To Drew's relief Sakura didn't prattle on about random things. She actually used her too smart for her age intellect to successfully puzzle through the optics worksheet—which pleased Drew to no end as he swiftly compared his answers to hers and found he'd actually managed to answer more questions correctly then she had (Ok, she'd missed one by forgetting to carry a negative sign, but that didn't mean it was no less gratifying to reinforce the common belief _I'm older then you; therefore, I'm smarter_ that all upperclassmen held over the underclassmen).

As fourth period let out and lunch rolled around, Drew eagerly bounced towards the cafeteria leaving Sakura in his wake. In Drew's humble experience all interesting things happened at lunch—such as the changing of menus from the week old mystery meat to fish tacos, break-ups, make-ups, the epic and overly dramatic _will-you-go-to-homecoming-with-me_ proposals which tormented many men, and other such mundane things. For Drew his mission required reaching and passing through the lunch line formed between standing in line and actually sitting down and eating his food.

Obstacles must be overcome. Distractions must be ignored, and many hallways must be traversed in order to reach this humble goal. And so in his great rush to successfully reach the lunch line, Drew missed the beginnings of another harrowing adventure for his friends, the Lyoko Warriors.


	11. Malfunction

**A/N 7-2-10: Hey, it's a relatively longish chapter that's been published in under three months! Let all be delighted and rejoice accordingly.**

**Chapter 11**

Well, Drew didn't completely miss the attack on his friends' lives. He was an unfortunate, helpless bystander whose brain short circuited at the sight of _him_ holding wolverine claws posed over Sakura's throat. An incoherent "What?" was all he managed when he first caught hold of the ghostly, paradoxical sight before him. Forgotten, his tray of food clattered to the ground slopping its contents across the tile, and his preciously salvaged Boston cream pie fell with a dull splat even as he heard the other him say,

"You bear the taint of the Evil One!" and move his unclawed fist against Sakura's temple. Huge brown eyes wide with shock and bewilderment locked with dull hazel, and Drew once again managed to splutter out another (but bigger) "What?"

Why would _Drew_ attack Sakura? Why would he _ever_ have a reason to hunt her down and attack her? Why would Drew attack _Sakura_?

_I'm in an illusion,_ Drew concluded as seconds ticked by with eternity spaced in between. _That's the only explanation. Something's gone wrong, and I'm on Lyoko, and XANA's finally screwed me over, and this can only be an illusion._

Because there was no way he would attack Sakura. Not her, not Sakura, not ever. But somehow, despite his rapid train of thought, Drew was unable to repress one final "What?" before another voice entered the fray.

"Drew!" a female voice screamed. Head whipping to the side Drew caught sight of Hallie being chased by…_Riley?_

"Run for your life!" Hallie finished, and she stumbled across the courtyard through a crowd of alarmed students, narrowly missing the hissing electric blue blade as it swiped through the lunch table she'd jumped across in her frantic run towards the school. The swish of doors opening, a glimpse of black hair and malevolent red eyes burning with unspoken volumes of anger, and Hallie disappeared into the school, Jedi Riley on her heels.

"You bear the Evil One's taint!" carried the Jedi's voice from across the courtyard.

All eyes rested on the two Drews and Sakura. _Run,_ echoed Hallie's desperate cry, and Drew could still see the deep fear haunting those green eyes, but instead of following her command Drew launched himself at his lookalike. For once Drew was going to take a leaf out of Dante's book and protect the one he cared for. Wrestling with himself until successfully pinned against the cafeteria floor, Drew's eyes shot towards the now free Sakura.

"Get out of here," he said. At her moment of hesitation, and the subtle reversal in who was restraining who in the pin between his real self and his imitation, Drew shouted in order to reinforce his command. "Now!"

Scrambling to her feet, Sakura careened out the door, pushing through the crowd of students and the hall traffic. Grunting, Drew tried unsuccessfully to hold onto his image. "Oh no, you don't," he growled as he ran through every trick in his book in order to counteract the other's superior strength and hold it long enough to let Sakura get away.

"We must seek out the Evil One's taint," It droned completely unfazed by Drew's grip. "We must seek out and destroy the Evil One and its taint."

"Not going to happen," Drew grunted, and he shoved It off of him and into the cafeteria's counters. Well, Drew though wryly as It picked itself off the floor and turned to face him. He'd always wondered what it'd be like to fight, well, him. He never did find out.

The other him vaulted over all the heads in the cafeteria and sliced through the glass windows lining the room, but not without Drew delivering a parting shot. A quick scoop from his lunch strewn across the cafeteria floor and he came up with a bowl of spaghetti and an orange and proceeded to chunk both at his other self.

The orange connected with a barrage of airborne the back of the other Drew's head, but the spaghetti bowl was the shot heard around Kaddic as the Second Great Food war broke out as a pressure release from the tension built up from Drew's Other's appearance. Even as food flew through the air (right after Drew's spaghetti smacked into the face of one of the touchiest, short-fused juniors on campus) Drew watched his other leap through the window, land in the courtyard and disappear in a burst of light and pixels.

An uncomfortable interlude with cafeteria food and ultimately the Principal soon followed. Fate conspired against Drew after an intense 30 minute session with Principal Delmas where she tried, unsuccessfully, to weasel out information about his Other. Afterward Drew found himself back in the cafeteria armed with a mop, broom, disinfectant, and a trash can to clean up the leftovers from the fight he'd instigated. The irritable junior from before—a literal bruiser—had also been employed along with a few other key characters including, to Drew's utter dismay, the vile Sam. Needless to say, Drew spent the next three hours highly invested in his cleaning efforts if only to spare himself the agony of interacting with the above. He failed to leave the cafeteria without having his faced shoved into a bowl of spaghetti though.

Three and a half hours after starting, Drew heaved the last trash bag into the dumpsters behind the cafeteria satisfied that purgatory had passed and that the cafeteria no longer resembled a war zone. Cheekily smiling, he happily received his cell phone back from the lovely supervising cafeteria lady that had kept his fellow students from eviscerating him with a spatula, and he fled the crime scene.

Shock greeted Drew when he finally flicked open his cell and found ten voice messages and twenty-five texts.

"Drew, it's Riley, where are you?"

"Drew, have you seen—,"

"Where are you?"

"Pick up already. Look, there's something weird going down—,"

"If you won't pick up, fine. Dante did a scan. It's not XANA, but we don't know what it is. Uh-oh,"

"_You bear the Evil One's taint!_ Gotta run,"

"Ok, safe, she's gone. No one has their phones Drew, or they're like you and not answering. They're doppelgangers of us running around or something—,"

"Dude, have you seen Sakura or Dante or Hallie? I'm hiding out in our dorm for the moment. The doppelgangers have gone away for now. So far they've come and gone twice, but there's no guarantee they're gone for good."

The following messages followed the same trend of inquiry. Where was Drew, was he ok, and that their doppelgangers kept popping up sporadically all with the same message: _You bear the taint of the Evil One._

…

For a school that had been infiltrated by "ghosts", or so the student body had determined the doppelgangers, Kaddic moved on with the same bustle and cheer of life at the end of classes as usual, but Drew did bear the weight of many curious stares from the student body. All of which he bore nobly as he trekked to his dorm hoping to rendezvous with Riley.

The common room drew eerily silent as he passed through, but Drew shrugged it off. With a doppelganger of yourself running around and then starting the food fight of the school year, the fish bowl of celebrityism descends quite quickly as rumors proliferate. The hushed whispers haunting his departure snuffed out of existence behind the closed door connecting the common room to the boys' staircase.

Pushing through the third floor's door, Drew stepped onto the dull beige carpet worn and dirty from hundreds of feet crossing it day after day and into the empty hall. Most of the hall's occupants were downstairs in the common room or out and about on campus hanging with friends or attending athletic practice. Hopefully, Drew thought as he paused outside his room, Riley had done the responsible thing and ditched his after school practice. Muffled voices burst into welcome clarity as Drew swung open the door to his room and found, to his relief, Riley huddled before his computer having a web cam conversation with Hallie and Dante.

"Ah, Drew," Dante said when he spied the blonde. "Good, you're here. We've been worried."

"I've been worried," interrupted Hallie from her spot hovering behind Dante's elbow. "He's been as cool as a cucumber," and she proceeded to shoot Dante a faux glare.

Riley turned around and scanned the empty doorway behind Drew expectantly. "Where's Sakura?" he asked. Carefully Drew closed the door separating the conference call from the rest of the dorm and answered. "I haven't seen her in three hours. Hasn't she checked in?"

Onscreen Dante shook his head. "We thought she was with you," Hallie said softly, and Drew repressed a groan as he noticed the pinkette's face fall from delight at his presence to worry.

"I haven't seen her," he replied weakly. "I only just escaped clean up duty in the cafeteria. I started a food fight in my efforts to stop my, uh, doppelganger,"

"Avatar," Dante corrected.

"What?"

"We've figured out what our doppelgangers are," Hallie said perking up enough to lean over Dante's shoulder. "They're our avatars from Lyoko."

"I gathered that much," Drew said. Beside him Riley smiled in amusement. "How did you put it Dante? They're "primitive wire-frame constructs?"

"Well, mine attacked Sakura," Drew said and crossed his arms defensively. "And if they're our avatars then how come they're walking about on earth attacking us and saying "You bear the taint of the evil one?" I'd never attack Sakura—,"

Here Riley, Sakura, and Dante rolled their eyes.

"You know what I mean," Drew spluttered. "We may spar on Lyoko and duel," ("Is that what they call their fights? Hallie muttered) "But I'd never attack her defenseless with the intent to kill, not like that me did."

"They're not us," Riley said in what Drew was sure was supposed to be a reassuring manner. If that was the intention, then he failed miserably.

"They aren't solid either," Hallie piped in. "Just holograms," Hallie finished.

"How do you know?" Drew countered. "I saw one claw out a pane of glass. I wrestled with one so that he couldn't get at Sakura. I threw an orange at mine and connected. How can they just be holograms?"

"I got ran through with a lightsaber," Hallie informed Drew somberly. He could just here the unspoken words trailing her sentence, _and lived to tell the tale_!

"Really?" he asked and stole a quick glance at Dante, Hallie's self appointed protector.

"Hence the phrase _primitive wire-frame constructs_," Riley said, and Drew finally understood the unshakable spark of mirth dwelling in Riley's eyes.

"Huh", Drew said. Across the screen Dante rested his forehead in his hand with a sigh of exasperation. "Anyway," Dante said in an attempt to steer the conversation back on track, "before you came in we were diagnosing the problem and identifying our pursuers. Shall we go over it again?"

"Riley's avatar's after me," Hallie said simply.

"Sakura's haunting my footsteps and trying to make me her newest pincushion," Riley said nonchalantly as if there were worse things than being attacked by family.

"I'm-err-my avatar was after Sakura," Drew said. "No one's been hunting me though."

Dante nodded. "I thought as much. So far only my and Hallie's avatars haven't made an appearance for obvious reasons."

Hallie chimed in with the translation. "Dante's confident my avatar won't leave the computer for any reason, and apparently, he is his own person, we don't have to worry about him popping up unexpectedly. It's just you, Sakura, and Riley prowling about."

Mulling this over Drew nodded. "Right, have you considered time travel and multiple cases of amnesia/delusions in order to explain this?"

Hallie giggled while Riley rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"This isn't Hollywood Drew," Riley finally said. "Whatever the problem is, it doesn't involve XANA. Ever since the last XANA attack, scans of the towers have been running nonstop, and none have shown any active towers."

"At least XANA isn't involved yet," Hallie said an edge of caution lacing her words.

"So if it's not XANA, then what's—," he paused. "Oh no," Drew said. "No, you're kidding me."

The looks on their three faces told Drew that, no, they weren't kidding him. "You don't really think that the supercomputers acting up spontaneously."

"You're the one with the time travel theories," Riley reminded the disbelieving blonde.

"But my theory actually makes sense," Drew argued.

"Maybe in your own fantasy world," Riley quipped and glanced at the rest of his friends as if daring them to prove him wrong.

"Guys," Hallie said interrupting the flinging of comebacks. "Chill. Whatever's wrong, we'll figure it out and fix it."

Dante nodded, eyes solemn. "Rendezvous at the supercomputer as soon as feasibly possible."

And just like that the conversation was over.


	12. Malfunction, the End

**Chapter 12:**

"You bear the taint of the Evil One."

Luckily, after Drew's initial run in with his "primitive wire-frame construct" Drew hadn't had that phrase or any similar one directed toward him. Unfortunately, three close friends of his couldn't say the same, and while Hallie insisted the holograms stalking the trio of targets (of which she was a member) were harmless, only two of the trio were accounted for: Riley and Hallie. After bursting out of the twin cafeteria doors running for what could have been her life, no one had heard from or seen Sakura's purple streaked black-haired head.

Out of the remaining quartet the only one who didn't seem worried was Dante, but Drew personally thought that he too displayed signs of anxiety through his precise yet clipped speech, drawn face, and emotionless façade. Only Hallie seemed to draw any emotion from his face, but usually after whatever break in passivity, Dante withdrew further into his neutral reserve, and Riley, well, Drew didn't want to delve too deeply into that repressed emotional mess, but he pitied the fools who eventually blew Riley's short fuse before he found his sister.

Drew imagined being a big brother was a constant conflict between wanting to protect the younger sibling and reminding themselves that, yes, the younger sibling could care for themselves. But with XANA or Lyoko involved, Drew understood not even wanting to let there be a chance for things to fall apart. But at least (Drew had said to console Riley), at the least the holograms weren't lethal. Which was why he and Hallie had been put on the Sakura Search and Rescue Squad, while Dante and Riley investigated the supercomputer.

Personally, if Drew had arranged the teams for splitting up he would have separated Dante and Riley because putting two alpha males (even reserved ones like Riley) on the same team was a bad idea, but no, apparently since chivalry was the call of the hour all damsels not in distress should stay out of distress and body guarded by non-tainted knights less likely to draw attention to himself, the two had reasoned.

So Supercomputer Man and Tainted Big Bro investigated the supercomputer while Sir Drew and Lady Hallie sought out the missing Sakura. Their partnership had lasted five minutes before both Hallie and Drew reasoned that by splitting up they'd cover more ground while remaining in cell phone contact. After all, Drew had no intention of twiddling his fingers outside the girls' dorm while Hallie scoured the inside.

So he turned towards the library hoping that maybe his missing friend could be found seeking refuge in those hidden passages they had explored together. He could only cross his fingers, and fervently wish Dante and Riley had found out more than he had.

…

If Drew had been present or had left his phone on (best left off, he and Hallie had reasoned, so that on the off chance Dante or Riley called and found out he and Hallie weren't searching together they wouldn't proceed to have aneurisms) he would have found not one but two of wishes granted. First wish: Dante and Riley were on the fast track to gaining answers to the entire Lyoko Avatar mess, and second wish: they had located Sakura (yelling quite energetically at the supercomputer). To her brother's relief, she forwent any colorful explicative.

That was how the intrepid duo had found Sakura, smacking computer monitors, all hard drives, and motherboards related to the computer in a creatively noobish manner. To say Sakura was…upset would have been putting it mildly. Cowering overcame her once significantly audible clearings of the throat occurred. She had whirled, mid-rant, mouth still forming the syllables for _binary, brainless, overrated quipu_, seen the clearers of the throats, and froze hand hovering over the mouse with alert screens screeching insolently on.

"Oh," was all she managed before slumping down into the chair. "I'm dead."

The following explanation started with "It's not my fault!" Which changed to "Ok, maybe it is, a little," and ended with a hysterical "I don't know what's going on or how to stop it, and this…_antique_ won't cooperate with me!" And then the real facts came out. Because of Sakura's unfortunate operating problems with her laptop and the school's computers she had come to the one computer she knew she could work with without any "_catastrophically traumatic meltdowns"_ and had finished her computer science project. She had essentially pulled an all-nighter, but had succeeded in finishing the project with little difficulties.

"Except my avatars went wonky on me. In my program I'm telling a story about a princess and her loyal knights that fight a great evil that is trying to take over the kingdom. The knights fight the Evil One's minions, and then the Evil One himself and save the land. But for whatever reason on my last run of the program the supercomputer rejected my princess and knights. It was either create new avatars and edit all of my code, or-,"

"Substitute in already established avatars," Riley finished. "Us."

"Yeah," Sakura shrugged avoiding eye contact with the guys. "I replaced everyone, and the program worked like a dream. I saved my progress, took my flashdrive, and ran to class. And then…"

"Your knights appeared attacking those who bear your Evil One's taint," Dante concluded. "That certainly makes sense and lines up with my own observations."

Sakura squirmed at the knowing gleam in Dante's eyes. Out of the entire trio Riley frowned and stepped between Dante and the supercomputer. "What observations?" he asked glancing from his sister to Dante.

"I propose that when Sakura used the supercomputer to finish her ALICE project, she inadvertently installed a new program onto the supercomputer, or at least led the supercomputer to believe she had. So when she ran her last program…"

"I left it on," Sakura finished. "Because I was under a time crunch, and the program would stop when it reached the stop command at the end." She minimized various Alert windows until she reached the playback window for ALICE. "But it won't close no matter how much I try to stop it. The program won't end."

Peering over her shoulder and examining the click and drag code options, Dante reviewed Sakura's program and functions. "That's because the supercomputer doesn't think the program is over. It took the program to the next logical level where the scanner technology is involved and filled in its blanks. The only Evil One it knows is XANA, and the only knights it knows are the Avatars it had you substitute in. So going on the theory that XANA is the Evil One, then those who bear the _taint_ of the Evil One-,"

"Are me, Sakura, and Hallie," Riley finished. "But not you or Drew. And the avatars were attacking _us_." The light bulb turned on and Riley spun to face his sister poised on the brink of brilliantness. "Sakura, summarize the plot line of your project."

"Why?"

"Trust me."

Coming to herself. "Right, right. What was I thinking?"

"Ok, if you haven't guessed already then my project was largely inspired by our lives as superheroes on the digital level. I figure why shun a good thing? So, my plot line. The mighty warriors are introduced to the princess. The Evil One attacks, and the Mighty Warriors attack the Evil One's minion who appeared in the land. The Mighty Warriors attack all bearing the taint of the Evil One and defeat the evil One's minions. In conclusion the princess and her warriors save the kingdom."

"Wait, say that again."

"Say what?"

"Hypothetically, assuming Dante's right ("I'm rarely wrong"), and the supercomputer is trying to complete this program by materializing characters, then your mighty warriors are the doppelgangers that have been harassing us."

"Sure," Sakura agreed.

"And the program won't close until it's completed?"

"Yes, hence the yelling."

"Ok, then question and feel free to chime I whenever you want, Brainiac," Riley said. "Why am I, you, and Hallie considered tainted by these warriors? Why have we only seen three when your screen obviously shows four mighty warriors, and what's going to happen to those who bear the taint of the Evil One? What will the mighty warriors try to do to us?"

"Well, if they're unsuccessful in defeating you then the princess' champion will come forward and…oh." Sakura paled and slid out of the chair. "Dante, we have a problem."

"Already on it," Dante said as he slipped into the captains seat.

"What's the problem?"

"The Evil One's minion has yet to make a physical appearance." Sakura intoned grimly. "But you'll stop the program before that right?" Sakura asked dante, silently banking on Dante's computer skills with to end the war and save the day. To her astonishment he failed her.

"At this point I'd have virtualize myself into the supercomputer and manually stop the program itself while fending off the supercomputers fire walls." A pause. "And it has very good firewalls."

"How do you know?" Riley asked, curious.

"I was one of the three geniuses who helped encode, backup, and modify those firewalls. They're so good in fact that even I will have trouble getting past them."

"What should we do?" Sakura asked glancing at her brother then Dante. Dante paused halfway between the elevator and the computer.

"Wait for my signal. As soon as I disable the programs, I'll need you to stop and end the program. When the screen isn't frozen close the program. Contact Hallie and Drew to warn them. They may have company before we disable the program."

"We're on it," Riley assured Dante already flipping out his cell and punching in numbers. Dante smiled, and the closing elevator doors hid him from sight.

Taking a moment Sakura sighed as the weight on her shoulders began to ease. Dante would go in, work his magic, and they'd be able to stop the program. It would all be over. For there were only two ways for the program to end. To hack in and close it, or to let it run the course, and if it ran the course, well, Lyoko would lose three of its warriors, forever.

Rubbing her temples, Sakura bitterly wondered why out of all her time at Kaddic did she have to run into a life and death situation now of all days.

"I'm afraid to even ask how he thinks he'll be able to help stop this," she admitted to Riley as she idly watched the screens before her register the scanner activity below her.

_Scanner, Dante_

"Well, in vague speak he's having the scanner turn him into pure binary code, so he can maneuver around inside the supercomputer, and shut this freak show down," Riley replied.

_Transfer, Dante_

"Yeah, I know. And I get why he's doing it."

"Besides the fact he actually stands a chance of dodging the firewalls?" Riley deadpanned. "I sense a 'but' coming."

Sakura leaped at her opening. "I get that the program has to end, and he's our best shot for ending it, but I don't think we have the luxury of a manual shut down. You see, in my story, the Evil One has tainted the land of the mighty warriors, so they fight the spread of that taint by terminating it with extreme prejudice."

"Yeah," Riley drawled. "So?"

"So, we're way past that point. If we," she pointed at herself and her brother, "are the taint, then we've already been dealt with. We've already been 'terminated'."

"We're alive," Riley pointed out flatly.

Like a steam engine letting out excess steam, Sakura heaved out a frustrated sigh. "I know, but in the programs eyes we aren't problems anymore or else we'd still be besieged by the mighty warriors. So the next part of the storyline is the emergence of the Evil One's minion. The minion descends upon the land and challenges the mighty warriors to a fight, life or death, one winner, no loser. In response the Princess sends out her champion to face the minion, and the two duke it out."

Minions, mighty warriors, champions, Riley categorized. Why did his sister have to have an imagination? Why couldn't she have turned in an ALICE program where the character jumped in the air, clicked its heels, and vanished or something that mundane? Why the complex storyline?"

"The point?" he asked.

"If the supercomputer is running my program and making it reality, then where is the minion and the champion?"

_Integration_

…

In Dante's professional opinion binary code was no more interesting in person then on paper. Really, streams of ones and zeros signaling the flow of electricity in a computer zipping about in streams of information in an entire world devoted to processing and utilizing that information really couldn't compare to the warmth of a ray of sun or the smell of freshly baked apple pie. But then again all Dante had to do was simply reach out and halt a line of binary, bed and rearrange it to his fancy, and presto, he had created something new. So far he had yet to taste sweeter nectar then the power of creation, and for a moment Dante understood XANA a bit better than he had before.

_The power to create and destroy._

And right on cue with his binary meddling, the firewalls showed up practically screaming "Intruder!" And so the game of keep away between Dante and the supercomputer began as he sought the out of control program Sakura had inadvertently created. The program itself proved easy to find. All the streams of code seemed to be coming from or heading to a singular mass of binary.

_Time to get to business. _

A shudder knocked Dante out of his train of thought, and all nearby streams of code were sucked into Sakura's program as if a hole had opened drawing the codes toward it and bringing Dante along for the ride. Detached and distancing himself from his emotions, Dante let logic and reason take over.

Latching onto one of the firewalls buzzing about, Dante rearranged and added bits of code until the firewall no longer saw him but Sakura's cancer like program as the priority alert. Zipping off the firewall signaled its fellow programs, all falling into hyper alert setting about to stop the output of Sakura's program. Satisfied, Dante focused on his next move.

The firewalls would hinder any outgoing code from Sakura's program; therefore, the unnatural evolution in the holograms reasoning levels and sense of duty to track down the _tainted_ _ones_ on earth would cease. Now, Dante just had to stop the input of data feeding the program by terminating the connection between the supercomputer and the program before any corrupting programs of XANA found a way to twist the situation to new levels of insanity.

Circling around and slipping between streams Dante joined a branch of data being drawn inside Sakura's program. In order to shutdown Sakura's program from the inside, Dante would carry out some corrupting of his own. He couldn't think of a more logical plan. Go in, shut down the system, and get out. Simple, efficient, or so he thought as the last ones and zeros of his self slipped inside his target.

If numbers could scream then the supercomputer would be reverberating with screams of shared agony for months to come. Back in the material world a new deluge of error signs besieged Sakura's eyes, ears, and nerves.

"Dante?" she whispered, pressing the tips of her fingers against the screen. To her right, Riley stirred from his meditative gaze at the screen and placed his hand on his sister's shoulder. "He's ok. He's Dante," he said in that enviably calm and reassured way that Sakura wished she could call up in times of crisis.

After failing to summon a shaky smile, Sakura merely latched onto her brother's hand squeezing it for all its worth, and tried to chase away her doubts and fears. She finally bared them for her brother's viewing.

"But even Dante's not invincible."

Riley merely squeezed her hand again hoping his face remained steady and didn't betray his similar thoughts of unease. So the Stern vigil continued.

…

"Sakura," Drew called pushing through dense bushes and ducking beneath tree boughs as he crunched along on top a pine needle carpet in the woods bordering Kaddic's soccer fields. "Sakura!"

Pushing forward in his expedition, Drew idly pulled the familiar weight of his cell out of his picket and contemplated its dark screen. He really should call the others, or Hallie at least, just to get an update, but even as his hand moved to power up the small device a part of him made him pause, hesitate.

Sure, the woods surrounding the athletic fields were a long shot, but if anyone was going to be attacked by a sort of solid Avatar and be left for dead it would be in an isolated place cut off from help, like the woods or maybe the teacher's lounge, or the guys restroom on the fourth floor of the science building. No one went near that hall after the jocks and science geniuses had their latest brawl/fight for dominance (It was the age old question: brains or brawn?).

But he digressed. Mentally scolding himself for the lapse in concentration, Drew made his decision. Pride or no pride, some sort of news would be appreciated, so Drew pressed his cell's power button and waited. Scowling at the lack of reaction, Drew went through his memory frustrated at his phone and wondering why it wouldn't work now of all times. He'd only charged it last…ah…week. Yeah, a lack of charging would definitely lead to an inability to turn on. Stupid Drew, after that long phone marathon, he should've charged his phone.

"Right," Drew mused aloud as he tucked his phone into his pocket. "Hallie said after she checked the girls dorms that she would poke around in the gym, so I'll just meet her there." And badger her into checking in with Riley and Dante.

"Don't worry Sakura," Drew addressed the trees of the forest in the place of his beloved friend. "We'll find you."

A twig snapped jerking Drew out of his apostrophe, and his attention onto his surroundings, and he bit back a word that his late mother would have washed his mouth out with soap for uttering (and had once when he'd first discovered such language).

"What are you supposed to be," he asked the crackling, vaguely humanoid figure in front of him. In his mind though he already was running around the likelihood of escaping or thwarting the poltergeist in front of him in the middle of the woods. For a breathless moment XANA's minion and Drew stared each other down as if high noon had occurred and the two were in a classic western face off. The poltergeist moved first; with a crash and color shift from silver to the body of the poltergeist stretched. Its torso and arms extended as they shot towards Drew's shaggy blond head.

Darting behind the closest pine with the broadest trunk, Drew cast his gaze around the forest floor looking for a tool best suited for such an interlude, and he silently thanked Dante for the forewarning of trouble. Shortly after Riley's run in with XANA's hypnotic computer program, Dante had taken Drew aside and explained a pattern Drew had began to realize developing.

Back with the Truffel incident, Sakura and Hallie had been brainwashed, and following that Riley too had been hypnotized by a program of XANA's allowing his possession. Like a sniper shooting aluminum cans off a fence with a BB gun, XANA had lined up his targets and was shooting them down one by one leaving only Drew and Dante free of XANA's influence or really _taint_.

Now Drew could feel the cross-hairs narrowing on him. Two elongated arms lashed around the tree narrowly missing the back of Dante's neck as he threw himself to the forest floor. Long neck snaking around the tree, the poltergeist received a face full of tree branch, and Drew grinned as the electrical current crackled harmlessly off the wood.

"Ha," Drew crowed. "You missed!" and he gulped as the oval face emblazoned with XANA's eye came within an inch of his nose. "Not good," was all he managed before the thing's right arm coiled around the tree branch ripping it out of Drew's hands and sent Drew toppling to the forest floor, again. Shaking the stars out of his eyes, Drew looked up to see the thing's left hand descending over his face crackling with electricity. Then darkness.

…

"Ugh," crackled a voice over the computer's speakers. Two Stern heads riveted to the screen. "Anyone there?"

Riley snatched the headset off Sakura's head and slipped it onto his own, ignoring her startled yip. "Dante, you with us?"

A pause and then. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Your status?" Riley asked after casting aside asking if Dante was ok. After that shout, well, he doubted anyone would be ok.

"Alive," Dante coughed, "And mostly in one piece. I'll need a few minutes to regenerate some missing pieces of code. The firewalls were more effective then I realized."

"So," Sakura said. "You're ok?"

Filtering through to cyberspace her voice took on a more mechanical property but from inside his safe haven in a conquered firewall, Dante managed to change a grimace into an unseen grin. "Yeah, Sakura, I'll be ok."

Of course he didn't mention how rough her program had treated him after he'd been sucked in. No need to worry her needlessly or afflict her with more guilt, yet he also didn't mention he had failed to shut down Sakura's program. No need to disillusion his friends to his invulnerability, yet. While he had managed to hasten the conclusion of the program, that merely meant his presence helped catalyze the beginning of the program's much swifter and conclusive end.

As his code kept regenerating and mending his missing code, Dante focused on conserving his energy for his return to earth, and he worried for all those tainted by the Evil One; those XANA had touched.

Back on earth Drew came to consciousness with a groan, immediately squeezing his eyes shut. Throwing an arm over his eyes, Drew spent a moment collecting himself and pretending the garish light assaulting his retinas didn't hurt as much as his throbbing head insisted it did.

Light, assault, forest, poltergeist.

Drew's eyes shot open, and he scrambled to his feet and surveyed his sylvan surroundings only to hiss in discomfort as the fading sunlight increased the pounding in his head. Wow, what a day. And it had yet to end.

_Right, forest, bad idea,_ Drew thought and automatically plotted out his next move. Head back to the dorms, charge his phone, suck it up, and find out the latest update in news. And Drew resigned himself to the fact that XANA had a fourth notch on his stick, and that he had to pass the news on to the others.

While all this deep thinking and plotting occurred, Drew had stumbled out of the forest and oriented himself off the tall rise of the gymnasium across the athletic fields. Drew marveled at the thought he was actually excited and relieved to see the familiar school grounds, but the relief probably stemmed from the fact that he hadn't been kidnapped or moved during his lost time.

Crossing the athletic field proved more painful than anticipated. The ache in his joints melded with his headache as Drew's very heartbeat seemed to pound itself into his skulk, but like the British, Drew just carried on.

A spot of pink appeared on the edge of his vision and immediately his pace quickened and steps lightened. Now he didn't need to charge his phone. He could just use Hallie's.

"Hallie!" he called waving in a way resembling to a crazed loon, it was the headache, to the still teen girl. His arm and waving faltered, stilled then fell slowly to his side. He seemed to have walked into another classic western showdown. Ah, Drew thought as he came to a stop at Hallie's side, and followed her unwavering stare. The sight before him could prove frightening.

"So," Drew said, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "Is he real?" he asked eyes darting between Hallie and the latest doppelganger. "Cause we can take him."

An ironic smile rent her face. "It's quite solid, but it's not him."

"Well," Drew said, candid words dropping from his lips as soon as thought. "That's reassuring." But on second thought, it wasn't because looking on at the latest creation of Sakura's haywire supercomputer overriding program, the avatar before him began to seem quite intimidating.

"Ah," Drew once again broke the silence, "why isn't he moving?"

"It's conflicted," Hallie steadily replied. "It doesn't know which function to obey. Whether it should protect or eliminate me."

"So, he's frozen?" Drew guessed perking up a bit before checking himself. No, if the doppelganger in front of him was frozen, then Hallie wouldn't be staring at it so imploringly and so commandingly.

"So, other than being," Drew waved at the avatar's lanky form, "you know, what is his function?"

In response Hallie did the most annoying thing possible. She answered a question with a question. "Did Sakura tell you about her computer programming disaster? How she lost her characters for her compsci project. She replaced her chief actors with our Lyoko profiles. I was her princess and Dante…"

"Dante," Drew prompted eager to solidify the connection between what Hallie was saying and the sight before his eyes.

Hallie took a deep breath and composed herself, "Dante was the Champion, the one in the story line which followed behind the mighty warriors and eliminated all minions of the Evil One from the Princess' kingdom."

Drew nodded, "So he's deciding whether he should kill us or not."

Hallie nodded. Her eyes never strayed from the avatar who bore an uncanny resemblance to Dante Millard.

…

The standoff continued. Hallie tense and still, the Dante avatar seemingly frozen in place, and Drew, Drew was ignoring a whirlwind of thoughts.

"Is he solid?" Drew asked while easing himself between Hallie and the avatar.

"It's been on a warpath," Hallie commented, and Drew began to notice his surroundings more. The smoking twisted metal dumpster crumpled in itself and halfway through the outside wall of the gymnasium, and the black, burnt circles of grass littering the field; the undeniable tinge of smoke wafting towards him through the wind, and the avatar's blood-red eyes.

"He attacked you?" Drew asked, his voice carrying across the look of astonishment on his face.

"I bear the taint of the Evil One," Hallie replied simply. _I've been marked by XANA._ "Besides, that's not Dante."

Drew ignored her. Operation Protect Hallie rose up towards the top of his priority list right above find out if everyone else is okay. Never taking his eyes off the avatar, he stepped backwards, and his right hand latched onto Hallie's wrist. "Got a plan, Spunky?" he muttered just loud enough for Hallie to hear. Across from them red sparks began dancing across the avatar's hands.

Hallie saw right through him. "Running makes things worse," Hallie insisted.

"Too bad," he retorted, and he jerked Hallie to the side out of the line of fire.

If their life had been a movie, things would have switched into slo-mo right then. The camera would have tracked Drew's leap to the side, switched to the look of fury roaring to life on the avatar's face along with its snarl, and the lightning storm of energy surging to life, and then the desperation on Hallie's face.

To Drew everything happened too quickly. Yanking Hallie, a sudden sense of cold and red lightning dominated his vision while his ears picked up Hallie's insistent cries.

"Stop! I command you to stop!"

And it did. The sheer fact that the avatar intent on wiping the two off the face of planet stopped after Hallie shouted at it too drew Drew to a halt.

"You have served honorably," Hallie continued eyes wild and hair in disarray and face flushed while she leaned over panting. "I release you from your duties. Be at peace and hurt no one."

And for a moment, Drew almost believed from her tone and air as she drew herself up that Hallie indeed had some blue blood flowing in her veins. And the avatar seemed to hear it too, for all red lightning died, and the avatar turned on its heel and marched away from them in the direction of the factory. Hallie and drew briefly exchanged glances then followed.

…

"You do realize how sappy you sounded when–,"

"Drew."

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

"As you wish, princess."

…

The rest of the affairs concluded surprisingly calmly. After the day Drew had experienced from their avatars to the food fight to the avatar again, it seemed too easy. Dante's avatar traveled back to the factory, to the scanners actually, right when Dante emerged from Lyoko. The odd pair had stared at each other before the avatar walked past the real Dante and into the scanner.

The crisis of its existence quickly ended when Dante deleted it from the supercomputer's memory. It was to Drew's great relief when he saw Riley and Sakura safe and unscathed. For a moment when he had encountered Hallie and the avatar he had worried that the champion had already taken care of the siblings before hunting down Hallie. He'd never been happier to be wrong.

Of course, all happiness dissolved when he was told how the avatar crisis had occurred, and who was responsible. And once again Dante cleaned up the computer mess, and once again the crisis was averted and the day saved.

Drew wondered darkly how much longer this trite routine would continue. Crisis, impossible odds, and impossible solutions, and somehow all well and resolved in the end. And he wondered. Four out of five marked, four down and one to go; but then, he noticed the shadows and the haunted look in Dante's dark eyes as they drifted from face to face in the room. No, not four down one to go, Drew amended. But four down, one master plan to go.

And maybe Drew was borrowing a premonition from Hallie, but deep down he knew XANA was going to win this one. The one where everything counted.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N 1-20-11:** Enough is enough. It's time to wrap this baby.

**

* * *

Chapter 13:**

There weren't many things which had the nasty habit of haunting Hallie into the early hours of the morning and invading her sleep. Not a lot of things could leave her coiled tightly into herself, wrapping her sheets and covers closer for comfort and protection while she pretended that if she lay still enough and regulated her breathing and didn't open her eyes, the sickening sense of fear would release its coil on her gut and give her mind peace. Then she wouldn't feel so alone, so vulnerable.

No, not a lot of things spooked Hallie, except for her dreams. During her freshmen year of high school at KHA, Hallie had the interesting experience of being sent back in time to the period after her parents had shut down the supercomputer and had locked XANA away, supposedly forever. She hadn't stayed in that time. No, she'd been tugged back home to her proper place in time except for the fact that on her return trip she'd had a slight detour. The return to her present had overshot her, so that she'd lingered for the briefest of moments in the stream of time in her future. Not her far away future like decades but the near future, days ahead, weeks ahead…months ahead. And she'd long suspected that that particular detour had been the cause of her dreams, premonitions, and nightmares.

Glimpses of the future danced across her dreams and tonight in her nightmares. As always the dream jumped around, never staying still long enough to fully explore whatever scene played out. Finally giving up on sleep as a far off possibility, Hallie sat up and remembered the dream which troubled her soul.

Lyoko had been in flames. The sectors were crumbling, patches of digital mass missing with the wire frame foundations showing through. The horizon dark, completely absent of all light but a twilight, and she had been trapped. Trapped in a golden bubble and screaming to be heard, but forever alone suspended in the air, and no one could hear her, and her friends _couldn't_ help her.

Because they were trapped too, somewhere.

And someone was missing.

Fear stole over again, paralyzing her insides and causing tears to trickle down her face. A soft knock on her door stole Hallie's attention from the moonlight twisting in through the window to the slim figure of her sleep-ruffled mother hovering in the doorway.

"Another dream?" she queried.

A sob wrenched loose, quickly followed by another.

"Oh sweety. I'm here. I'm here."

And Hallie clung desperately to her mother, burrowing herself into the embrace as she sought to control the tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks, and seeking all comfort and reassurance given.

"I'm here," Aelita murmured and pressed a kiss to her daughter's head, her hands rubbing her daughter's back. "I'm here."

_But I won't be._

At school the following morning all noticed the lack of warmth in Hallie. She wore a stubbornly disheartened look and a reticent air which had worried Sakura to no end leaving her desperate enough to tag team with Drew and initiate the Make Hallie Smile mission. Or at least but some life back in her eyes.

For their eternally optimistic source of joy, to see something akin to despair in those eyes concerned many, most importantly her friends. For the team to see their Spunky lifeless and walking catatonic was a shock.

"You need to do something," Drew announced.

Raising an eyebrow, Dante levelly returned. "Do what?"

"Cheer her up," at Dante's unaffected stare, Drew continued. "Hallie. She looks like…like XANA rose up and killed her entire family last night. And yes, I have checked and the Belpois family is alive and well from Jeremy Jr. to great-great Uncle Edger. Something's up; Hallie's unhappy, and everyone has voted for you to do something about it."

"Me?" Dante repeated blandly.

Drew growled in frustration. "Yes, you. Even Riley's behind me on this. You Mr. I died inside when she was presumed dead. You have an uncanny ability to make or break her day. If anyone can cheer her up it'll be you because you care for her, and if you deny it then the entire world will know you're lying."

"What am I supposed to do?" he countered.

"Make her smile."

The two glared at each other stubbornly refusing to give ground. Finally, something gave and shifted inside of Dante who groaned. "Fine, but I don't do emotion speak."

Drew clapped him heartily on the back. "You don't have to. Just give her something to look forward too."

When Dante exactly made his move only he and Hallie knew, but at the end of the day a tremulous smile had ghosted across Hallie's eyes, and Drew had managed to get her to laugh weekly at the antics of the Theatre Club. And news soon trickled down the grapevine that a certain someone had promised Hallie a silent escort on Lyoko for her to travel wherever she wanted in the sectors whenever she chose in the next week. And apparently the date had been set for Saturday afternoon.

And as the nightmares drifted toward the back of her mind, Hallie began to forget or worry and eagerly abandoned the two to be replaced with anticipation. At last she could explore Lyoko again. An end seemed to dawn for her "grounding" on Lyoko. Thoughts of such joy effectively but perhaps foolishly left her to throw caution to the wind.

As Tuesday turned to Thursday which slipped into Friday, Hallie was more than happy to put all seriousness on the back burner in favor of the thought of happily exploring the interior of Sector 5. And if she had ceased to dream troubling nightmares, then who was she to complain over long sought peace and calm. Even if it turned out to be a calm before a storm.

Saturday afternoon, after lunch. That was when Hallie was to meet Dante, or rather when he'd come meet her. Either way no matter who met whom where, Saturday afternoon after lunch was the time of the "date", and like all girls with "dates" hanging over their heads, Hallie had awoken with the rooster's crow and had dwelled anxiously over the upcoming event.

What should she wear? Did it matter? It wasn't like she and Dante were going on a real honest to goodness social outing as two teens romantically interested in the other. Sure they were going to spend significant alone time together, just the two of them, alone, on Lyoko in Sector 5, Hallie's favorite sector, by themselves, no parents or friends intruding; and if Hallie happened to really care for Dante and like him as more than a teammate and friend, it didn't mean that this excursion counted as a date.

And so what if Dante liked her too as more than a friend and teammate and was indulging Hallie in order to make her happy. It didn't mean they had a date. They were going on Lyoko of all places, and Lyoko was practically a guaranteed killjoy itself. So what if they'd first really met each other for the first time on Lyoko all those years ago, and so what if he'd saved her life a thousand times and had gone to great lengths to protect and ensure the continuation of her life. It didn't mean the trip to Lyoko, the solo pair trip, was a date.

She spent five hours agonizing over an outfit.

When lunchtime came around, Hallie took one quick look in the pantry and fridge and felt the butterflies whipping around in her stomach turn and plummet downwards; and if her mother commented on how green she looked, Hallie just smiled and nodded. No food meant no throwing up.

Finally, after three emergency trips back to her closet before settling on normal school clothes (just in case it wasn't a date), Hallie slipped out of her home and disappeared down the sewer system to meet up with Dante at the main drain.

Somehow the journey between the sewers and the factory passed in a blur through which Hallie nodded when appropriate, spoke little, and beamed in lieu of answering. And if Dante thought her behavior a little odd, he didn't mention it. After all he'd promised a _silent_ excursion.

Giddy thoughts, warm smiles, and light banter aside, Hallie was in her scanner humming with enthusiasm along to the latest fluffy, pop song that had blared on the radio sometime that morning during the Clothing Crisis. It was only when she'd virtualized and dropped down next to Dante in the blue corridors of Sector 5 that the realization hit and happy ignorance left.

Dream and reality met, clicking together seamlessly as the realization and premonition fully revealed itself to Hallie.

Today was the day.

Today, she would die.

…

And for all the finality the fact that this was the day where the end came, the day she'd sing her swan song, the only reaction Hallie took with this revelation was to reach out and hug Dante. An odd acceptance overcame her. She knew this day would come. One day, some day and here it was. And she was okay with that. Somehow, this was ok.

Withdrawing, she offered a hesitant smile up for Dante's approval. "Let's explore the Sector." And hand intertwining with his hand, she pulled him into the depths of the Sector.

This was the day she had dreamed. The day she had foreseen. What a day today would prove. She only knew pieces of the big picture, but Hallie knew enough. What she did know made her want to pull Dante in for another hug, or go home and seek her parent's comfort.

"Do you remember," she started as she eased their rapid pace from a sprint to a walk, hands still entwined. "How back in middle school I was so determined to hunt down the Sciphozoa?" She smiled, a fond look crossing her features. "I got this notion in my head that I needed to avenge my mother for all the atrocities it committed on her." Her brow dimpled. "I never truly succeeded," she mused. "And that came back to haunt me when I was pretending to be a Stern, Sakura and Riley's sister back when I lost my memory."

Somehow the walking had slowed to a pause, and the pair stood side by side even as Hallie revisited her past. "All my life Lyoko has been calling to me. I've never been able to escape it. No matter where I went, what I called myself, or what I remembered, Lyoko has always been here pulling me in. But I suppose in the end, that's alright." She chanced a glance upward and locked shy eyes with Dante.

"If it hadn't been for Lyoko, I'd have never met you." A brave smile spread across her face as she weighed and measured the composed face before her. "If it hadn't been for Lyoko, I wouldn't be the person I am today. I wouldn't have the friends I have now. I wouldn't…"

Pausing, thinking, wondering if she should complete the sentence and wondering where it would lead, Hallie looked down from Dante's dark eyes to their still intertwined hands and she felt his gaze shift from their hands to the top of her pink, curly-haired head.

_If it's the last thing I do…If I never have another chance…_

"Dante," she pleaded with whom or what she didn't quite know, but he was looking back at her, and his eyes burned. He understood what the fragile thing blossoming between them meant. Never breaking their connection, the second pair of hands entwined, and leaning ever closer, hearts pounding ever faster, the distance closed until they reached the point where they could touch, the briefest of lingering contact.

The ground heaved and shuddered. Tremors chased throughout and blocks fell. Lurching forward, Hallie fell into Dante's arms, only for another tremor to break their embrace.

Hands parted.

_Not now,_ Hallie found herself pleading as she landed on her back with the perfect view to see a mountain of blue blocks rush out of the depths of the Sector and rise up cutting Dante off from reach.

_Not yet._


End file.
